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Class.J S-AJ. 
Book i jJV. .^ 



A TRAVELER 
AT FORTY 











Piccadilly Circus 



A TRAVELER 
AT FORTY 



BY 

THEODORE DREISER 

h 
Author of "Sister Carrie," "Jennie Gerhardt," 
"The Financier," etc., etc. 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

W. GLACKENS 




i 



. >v >i ' ^t vy« 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1913 



y<.^ 



Copyright, 1913, by 
The Century Co. 



Published, November, igij 



©CI.A361019 



TO 
'BARFLEUR" 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 3 

II MISS X 16 

III AT FISHGUARD 24 

IV SERVANTS AND POLITENESS 32 

V THE RIDE TO LONDON 37 

VI THE BARFLEUR FAMILY 47 

VII A GLIMPSE OF LONDON 57 

VIII A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM 66 

IX CALLS 72 

X SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON -j-j 

XI THE THAMES 89 

XII MARLOWE 95 

XIII LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS II3 

XIV LONDON; THE EAST END 128 

XV ENTER SIR SCORP I36 

XVI A CHRISTMAS CALL 148 



XVII SMOKY ENGLAND 



171 



XVIII SMOKY ENGLAND {continued) 180 

XIX CANTERBURY 188 

XX EN ROUTE TO PARIS I98 

XXI PARIS! 211 



XXII A MORNING IN PARIS 
XXIII THREE GUIDES . . 



XXIV "THE POISON FLOWER 



225 
238 
247 



XXV MONTE CARLO 



255 

XXVI THE LURE OF GOLD! 264 

XXVII WE GO TO EZE 275 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVIII NICE . • 288 

XXIX A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY ......... 295 

XXX A STOP AT PISA 306 

XXXI FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 315 

XXXII MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY 327 

XXXIII THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI 2,2,7 

XXXIV AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN 345 

XXXV THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 354 

XXXVI PERUGIA 365 

XXXVII THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE 371 

XXXVIII A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE 380 

XXXIX FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 387 

XL MARIA BASTIDA 398 

XLI VENICE 409 

XLII LUCERNE 415 

XLIII ENTERING GERMANY 424 

XLIV A MEDIEVAL TOWN 437 



XLV MY FATHER'S BIRTHPLACE . 
XLVI THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 



449 
454 



XLVII BERLIN 462 

XLVIII THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 474 

XLIX ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND 486 

L AMSTERDAM 494 

LI "SPOTLESS TOWN" 501 

LII PARIS AGAIN 507 

LIII THE VOYAGE HOME 515 






ILLUSTRATIONS 



Piccadilly Circus Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGiS 

I saw Mr. G. conversing with Miss E 81/ 

One of those really interesting conversations between 

Barfleur and Miss X 20 *^ 

" I like it," he pronounced. " The note is somber, but 



it is excellent work " 70 



»/ 



Hoped for the day when the issue might be tried out 

physically 7 A 

Here the Thames was especially delightful ... 90 t- ' 

Bc...ieur 156 ^ 

The French have made much of the Seine .... 228 ^ 

One of the thousands upon thousands of cafes on the 

boulevards of Paris 236 v 

These places were crowded with a gay and festive 

throng 244 \y 

I looked to a distant table to see the figure he indicated 252 V" 

" My heavens, how well she keeps up ! " . . . . 290 y^ 

I sated myself on the house fronts or backs below the 

Ponte Vecchio 384 '" 

There can only be one Venice 404 ^ 

A German dance hall, Berlin 464 u^ 

Teutonic bursts of temper 482 ^ 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

CHAPTER I 

BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 

I HAVE just turned forty. I have seen a little some- 
thing of life. I have been a newspaper man, 
editor, magazine contributor, author and, before 
these things, several odd kinds of clerk before I found 
out what I could do. 

Eleven years ago I wrote my first novel, which was 
issued by a New York publisher and suppressed by him. 
Heaven knows why. For, the same year they suppressed 
my book because of its alleged immoral tendencies, they 
published Zola's " Fecundity " and " An Englishwom- 
an's Love Letters." I fancy now, after eleven years of 
wonder, that it was not so much the supposed immoral- 
ity, as the book's straightforward, plain-spoken discus- 
sion of American life in general. We were not used 
then in America to calling a spade a spade, particularly 
in books. We had great admiration for Tolstoi and 
Flaubert and Balzac and de Maupassant at a distance — 
some of us — and it was quite an honor to have hand- 
some sets of these men on our shelves, but mostly we had 
been schooled in the literature of Dickens, Thackeray, 
George Eliot, Charles Lamb and that refined company of 
English sentimental realists who told us something about 
life, but not everything. No doubt all of these great 
men knew how shabby a thing this world is — how full 
of lies, make-believe, seeming and false pretense it 

a 



4 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

all is, but they had agreed among themselves, or with 
the public, or with sentiment generally, not to talk 
about that too much. Books were always to be built 
out of facts concerning " our better natures." We 
were always to be seen as we wish to be seen. There 
were villains to be sure — liars, dogs, thieves, scoun- 
drels — but they were strange creatures, hiding away 
in dark, unconventional places and scarcely seen save at 
night and peradventure ; whereas we, all clean, bright, 
honest, well-meaning people, were living in nice homes, 
going our way honestly and truthfully, going to church, 
raising our children believing in a Father, a Son and a 
Holy Ghost, and never doing anything wrong at any time 
save as these miserable liars, dogs, thieves, et cetera, 
might suddenly appear and make us. Our books largely 
showed us as heroes. If anything happened to our 
daughters it was not their fault but the fault of these 
miserable villains. Mo.st of us were without original 
sin. The business of our books, our church, our laws, 
our jails, was to keep us so. 

I am quite sure that it never occurred to many of us 
that there was something really improving in a plain, 
straightforward understanding of life. For myself, 
I accept now no creeds. I do not know what truth is, 
what beauty is, what love is, what hope is. I do not 
believe any one absolutely and I do not doubt any one ab- 
solutely. I think people are both evil and well-in- 
tentioned. 

While I was opening my mail one morning I en- 
countered a now memorable note which was addressed 
to me at my apartment. It was from an old literary 
friend of mine in England who expressed himself as 
anxious to see me immediately. I have always liked 
him. I like him because he strikes me as amusingly 
English, decidedly literary and artistic in his point of 



BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 5 

view, a man with a wide wisdom, discriminating taste, 
rare selection. He wears a monocle in his right eye, a la 
Chamberlain, and I like him for that. I like people who 
take themselves with a grand air, whether they like me 
or not — particularly if the grand air is backed up by a 
real personality. In this case it is. 

Next morning Barfleur took breakfast with me; it was 
a most interesting affair. He was late — very. He 
stalked in, his spats shining, his monocle glowing with 
a shrewd, inquisitive eye behind it, his whole manner 
genial, self-sufficient, almost dictatorial and always final. 
He takes charge so easily, rules so sufficiently, does so 
essentially well in all circumstances where he is interested 
so to do. 

" I have decided," he observed with that managerial 
air which always delights me because my soul is not in 
the least managerial, " that you will come back to Eng- 
land with me. I have my passage arranged for the 
twenty-second. You will come to my house in England ; 
you will stay there a few days; then I shall take you to 
London and put you up at a very good hotel. You will 
stay there until January first and then we shall go to the 
south of France — Nice, the Riviera, Monte Carlo; from 
there you will go to Rome, to Paris, where I shall join 
you, — and then sometime in the spring or summer, when 
you have all your notes, you will return to London or 
New York and write your impressions and I will see that 
they are published ! " 

"If it can be arranged," I interpolated. 

" It can be arranged," he replied emphatically. " I 
will attend to the financial part and arrange affairs with 
both an American and an English publisher." 

Sometimes life is very generous. It walks in and 
says, " Here! I want you to do a certain thing," and it 
proceeds to arrange all your affairs for you. I felt cu- 



6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

riously at this time as though I was on the edge of a 
great change. When one turns forty and faces one's 
first transatlantic voyage, it is a more portentous event 
than when it comes at twenty. 

I shall not soon forget reading in a morning paper on 
the early ride downtown the day we sailed, of the suicide 
of a friend of mine, a brilliant man. He had fallen on 
hard lines; his wife had decided to desert him; he was 
badly in debt. I knew him well. I had known his er- 
ratic history. Here on this morning when I was sailing 
for Europe, quite in the flush of a momentary literary 
victory, he was lying in death. It gave me pause. It 
brought to my mind the Latin phrase, " memento mori." 
I saw again, right in the heart of this hour of brightness, 
how grim life really is. Fate is kind, or it is not. It 
puts you ahead, or it does not. If it does not, nothing 
can save you. I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in 
them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings. 

When I reached the ship, it was already a perfect 
morning in full glow. The sun was up; a host of gulls 
were on the wing; an air of delicious adventure enveloped 
the great liner's dock at the foot of Thirteenth Street. 

Did ever a boy thrill over a ship as I over this monster 
of the seas? 

In the first place, even at this early hour it was crowded 
with people. From the moment I came on board I was 
delighted by the eager, restless movement of the throng. 
The main deck was like the lobby of one of the great 
New York hotels at dinner-time. There was much calling 
on the part of a company of dragooned ship-stewards 
to " keep moving, please," and the enthusiasm of fare- 
wells and inquiries after this person and that, were de- 
lightful to hear. I stopped awhile in the writing-room 



BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 7 

and wrote some notes. I went to my stateroom and 
found there several telegrams and letters of farewell. 
Later still, some books which had been delivered at 
the ship, were brought to me. I went back to the dock 
and mailed my letters, encountered Barfleur finally and 
exchanged greetings, and then perforce soon found 
myself taken in tow by him, for he wanted, obviously, 
to instruct me in all the details of this new world upon 
which I was now entering. 

At eight-thirty came the call to go ashore. At eight 
fifty-five I had my first glimpse of a Miss E., as discreet 
and charming a bit of English femininity as one would 
care to set eyes upon. She was an English actress of 
some eminence whom Barfleur was fortunate enough to 
know. Shortly afterward a Miss X. was introduced to 
him and to Miss E., by a third acquaintance of Miss E.'s, 
Mr. G. — a very direct, self-satisfied and aggressive 
type of Jew. I noticed him strolling about the deck 
some time before I saw him conversing with Miss E., 
and later, for a moment, with Barfleur. I saw these 
women only for a moment at first, but they impressed me 
at once as rather attractive examples of the prosperous 
stage world. 

It was nine o'clock — the hour of the ship's sailing. I 
went forward to the prow, and watched the sailors on 
B deck below me cleaning up the final details of loading, 
bolting down the freight hatches covering the windlass 
and the like. All the morning I had been particularly 
impressed with the cloud of gulls fluttering about the 
ship, but now the harbor, the magnificent wall of lower 
New York, set like a jewel in a green ring of sea water, 
took my eye. When should I see it again? How soon 
-should I be back ? I had undertaken this voyage in pell- 
mell haste. I had not figured at all on where I was 



8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

going or what I was going to do, London — yes, to 
gather the data for the last third of a novel; Rome — 
assuredly, because of all things I wished to see Rome; 
the Riviera, say, and Monte Carlo, because the south of 
France has always appealed to me ; Paris, Berlin — pos- 
sibly ; Holland — surely. 

I stood there till the Mauretania fronted her prow 
outward to the broad Atlantic. Then I went below and 
began unpacking, but was not there long before I was 
called out by Barfleur. 

" Come up with me," he said. 

We went to the boat deck where the towering red 
smoke-stacks were belching forth trailing clouds of 
smoke. I am quite sure that Barfleur, when he originally 
made his authoritative command that I come to England 
with him, was in no way satisfied that I would. It was 
a somewhat light venture on his part, but here I was. 
And now, having " let himself in " for this, as he would 
have phrased it, I could see that he was intensely inter- 
ested in what Europe would do to me — and possibly 
in what I would do to Europe. We walked up and down 
as the boat made her way majestically down the harbor. 
We parted presently but shortly he returned to say, 
" Come and meet Miss E and Miss X. Miss E is reading 
your last novel. She likes it." 

I went down, interested to meet these two, for the 
actress — the talented, good-looking representative of that 
peculiarly feminine world of art — appeals tO' me very 
much. I have always thought, since I have been able 
to reason about it, that the stage is almost the only ideal 
outlet for the artistic temperament of a talented and 
beautiful women. Men? — well, I don't care so much 
for the men of the stage. I acknowledge the distinction 
of such a temperament as that of David Garrick or Edwin 
Booth. These were great actors and, by the same token, 




"I saw Mr. G. conversing with Miss E. 



BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 9 

they were great artists — wonderful artists. But in the 
main the men of the stage are frail shadows of a much 
more real thing — the active, constructive man in other 
lines. 

On the contrary, the women of the stage are somehow, 
by right of mere womanhood, the art of looks, form, 
temperament, mobility, peculiarly suited to this realm 
of show, color and make-believe. The stage is fairyland 
and they are of it. Women — the women of ambition, 
aspiration, artistic longings — act, anyhow, all the time. 
They lie like anything. They never show their true 
colors — or very rarely. If you want to know the truth, 
you must see through their pretty, petty artistry, back to 
the actual conditions behind them, which are condition- 
ing and driving them. Very few, if any, have a real 
grasp on what I call life. They have no understanding 
of and no love for philosophy. They do not care for 
the subtleties of chemistry and physics. Knowledge — 
book knowledge, the sciences — well, let the men have 
that. Your average woman cares most — almost en- 
tirely — for the policies and the abstrusities of her own 
little world. Is her life going right? Is she getting 
along? Is her skin smooth? Is her face still pretty? 
Are there any wrinkles? Are there any gray hairs in 
sight? What can she do to win one man? How can 
she make herself impressive to all men? Are her feet 
small? Are her hands pretty? Which are the really 
nice places in the world to visit? Do men like this trait 
in women? or that? What is the latest thing in dress, 
in jewelry, in hats, in shoes? How can she keep herself 
spick and span? These are all leading questions with 
her — strong, deep, vital, painful. Let the men have 
knowledge, strength, fame, force — that is their busi- 
ness. The real man, her man, should have some one of 
these things if she is really going to love him very much. 



lo A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

I am talking about the semi-artistic woman with ambi- 
tion. As for her, she cHngs to these poetical details 
and they make her life. Poor little frail things — fight- 
ing with every weapon at their command to buy and 
maintain the courtesy of the world. Truly, I pity 
women. I pity the strongest, most ambitious woman I 
ever saw. And, by the same token, I pity the poor help- 
less, hopeless drab and drudge without an idea above a 
potato, who never had and never will have a look in on 
anything. I know — and there is not a beating feminme 
heart anywhere that will contradict me — that they are 
all struggling to buy this superior masculine strength 
against which they can lean, to which they can fly in 
the hour of terror. It is no answer to my statement, no 
contradiction of it, to say that the strongest men crave 
the sympathy of the tenderest women. These are com- 
plementary facts and my statement is true. I am deal- 
ing with women now, not men. When I come to men I 
will tell you all about them! 

Our modern stage world gives the ideal outlet for all 
that is most worth while in the youth and art of the fe- 
male sex. It matters not that it is notably unmoral. 
You cannot predicate that of any individual case until 
afterward. At any rate, to me, and so far as women 
are concerned, it is distinguished, brilliant, appropriate, 
important. I am always interested in a well recom- 
mended woman of the stage. 

What did we talk about — Miss E. and I ? The stage 
a little, some newspapermen and dramatic critics that 
we had casually known, her interest in books and the fact 
that she had posed frequently for those interesting ad- 
vertisements which display a beautiful young woman 
showing her teeth or holding aloft a cake of soap or a 
facial cream. She had done some of this work in the 
past — and had been well paid for it because she was 



BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND ii 

beautiful, and she showed me one of her pictures in a 
current magazine advertising a set of furs. 

I found that Barfleur, my very able patron, was doing 
everything that should be done to make the trip com- 
fortable without show or fuss. Many have this 
executive or managerial gift. Sometimes I think it is 
a natural trait of the English — of their superior classes, 
anyhow. They go about colonizing so efficiently, in- 
dustriously. They make fine governors and patrons. I 
have always been told that English direction and English 
directors are thorough. Is this true or is it not? At 
this writing, I do not know. 

Not only were all our chairs on deck here in a row, but 
our chairs at table had already been arranged for — four 
seats at the captain's table. It seems that from previous 
voyages on this ship Barfleur knew the captain. He also 
knew the chairman of the company in England. No 
doubt he knew the chief steward. Anyhow, he knew 
the man who sold us our tickets. He knew the head 
waiter at the Ritz — he had seen him or been served by 
him somewhere in Europe. He knew some of the serv- 
itors of the Knickerbocker of old. Wherever he went, 
I found he was always finding somebody whom he knew. 
I like to get in tow of such a man as Barfleur and see him 
plow the seas. I like to see w'hat he thinks is important. 
In this case there happens to be a certain intellectual and 
spiritual compatibility. He likes some of the things that 
I like. He sympathizes with my point of view. Hence, 
so far at least, we have got along admirably. I speak 
for the present only. I would not answer for my moods 
or basic change of emotions at any time. 

Well, here were the two actresses side by side, both 
charmingly arrayed, and with them, in a third chair, 
the short, stout, red-haired Mr. G. 

I covertly observed the personality of Miss X. Here 



12 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

was some one who, on sight, at a glance, attracted me 
far more significantly than ever Miss E. could. I can- 
not tell you why, exactly. In a way, Miss E. appeared, 
at moments and from certain points of view — delicacy, 
refinement, sweetness of mood — the more attractive of 
the two. But Miss X., with her chic face, her dainty 
little chin, her narrow, lavender-lidded eyes, drew me 
quite like a magnet. I liked a certain snap and vigor 
which shot from her eyes and which I could feel repre- 
sented our raw American force. A foreigner will not, '\ 
I am afraid, understand exactly what I mean; but there 
is something about the American climate, its soil, rain, 
winds, race spirit, which produces a raw, direct incisive- 
ness of soul in its children. They are strong, erect, 
elated, enthusiastic. They look you in the eye, cut you 
with a glance, say what they mean in ten thousand ways 
without really saying anything at all. They come upon 
you fresh like cold water and they have the luster of a 
hard, bright jewel and the fragrance of a rich, red, full- 
blown rose. Americans are wonderful to me — Ameri- 
can men and American women. They are rarely polished 
or refined. They know little of the subtleties of life — 
its order and procedures. But, oh, the glory of their 
spirit, the hope of them, the dreams of them, the desires 
and enthusiasm of them. That is what wins me. They 
give me the sense of being intensely, enthusiastically, hu- 
manly alive. 

Miss X. did not tell me anything about herself, save 
that she was on the stage in some capacity and that she 
knew a large number oi newspaper men, critics, actors, 
et cetera. A chorus girl, I thought; and then, by the 
san>e token, a lady of extreme unconventionality. 

I think the average man, however much he may lie 
and pretend, takes considerable interest in such women. 
At the same time there are large orders and schools 



BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 13 

of mind, bound by certain variations of temperament, and 
schools of thought, which either flee temptation of this 
kind, find no temptation in it, or, when confronted, resist 
it vigorously. The accepted theory of marriage and 
monogamy holds many people absolutely. There are 
these who would never sin — hold unsanctioned relations, 
I mean — with any woman. There are others who will 
always be true to one woman. There are those who are 
fortunate if they ever win a single woman. We did not 
talk of these things but it was early apparent that she was 
as wise as the serpent in her knowledge of men and in 
the practice of all the little allurements of her sex. 

Barfleur never ceased instructing me in the intricacies 
of ship life. I never saw so comforting and efficient a 
man. 

" Oh " — who can indicate exactly the sound of the 
English " Oh " — " Oh, there you are." (His are always 
sounded like ah.) "Now let me tell you something. 
You are to dress for dinner. Ship etiquette requires it. 
You are to talk to the captain some — tell him how much 
you think of his ship, and so forth ; and you are not to 
neglect the neighbor to your right at table. Ship eti- 
quette, I believe, demands that you talk to your neighbor, 
at least at the captain's table — that is the rule, I think. 
You are to take in Miss X. I am to take in Miss E." 
Was it any wonder that my sea life was well-ordered and 
that my lines fell in pleasant places ? 

After dinner we adjourned to the ship's drawing-room 
and there Miss X. fell to playing cards with Barfleur at 
first, afterwards with Mr. G., who came up and found 
us, thrusting his company upon us perforce. The man 
amused me, so typically aggressive, money-centered was 
he. However, not he so much as Miss X. and her mental 
and social attitude, commanded my attention. Her card 
playing and her boastful accounts of adventures at Os- 



14 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

tend, Trouville, Nice, Monte Carlo and Aix-les-Bains 
indicated plainly the trend of her interests. She was all 
for the showy life that was to be found in these places — 
burning with a desire to glitter — not shine — in that half 
world of which she was a smart atom. Her conversa- 
tion was at once showy, naive, sophisticated and yet un- 
schooled. I could see by Barfleur's attentions to her, 
that aside from her crude Americanisms which ordinarily 
would have alienated him, he was interested in her beauty, 
her taste in dress, her love of a certain continental cafe 
life which encompassed a portion of his own interests. 
Both were looking forward to a fresh season of it — 
Barfleur with me — Miss X. with some one who was 
waiting for her in London. 

I think I have indicated in one or two places in the 
preceding pages that Barfleur, being an Englishman of the 
artistic and intellectual classes, with considerable tradi- 
tion behind him and all the feeling of the worth-whileness 
of social order that goes with class training, has a high 
respect for the conventions — or rather let me say ap- 
pearances, for, though essentially democratic in spirit 
and loving America — its raw force — he still clings 
almost pathetically, I think, to that vast established order, 
which is England. It may be producing a dying con- 
dition of race, but still there is something exceedingly 
fine about it. Now one of the tenets of English social 
order is that, being a man you must be a gentleman, 
very courteous to the ladies, very observant of outward 
forms and appearances, very discreet in your approaches 
to the wickedness of the world — but nevertheless you 
may approach and much more, if you are cautious enough. 

After dinner there was a concert. It was a dreary 
affair. When it was over, I started to go to bed but, 
it being warm and fresh, I stepped outside. The night 
was beautiful. There were no fellow passengers on 



BARFLEUR TAKES ME IN HAND 15 

the promenade. All had retired. The sky was mag- 
nificent for stars — Orion, the Pleiades, the Milky Way, 
the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. I saw one star, off 
to my right as I stood at the prow under the bridge, 
which, owing to the soft, velvety darkness, cast a faint 
silvery glow on the water — just a trace. Think of it! 
One lone, silvery star over the great dark sea doing this. 
I stood at the prow and watched the boat speed on. I 
threw back my head and drank in the salt wind. I 
looked and listened. England, France, Italy, Switzer- 
land, Germany — these were all coming to me mile by 
mile. As I stood there a bell over me struck eight 
times. Another farther off sounded the same number. 
Then a voice at the prow called, *' All 's well," and an- 
other aloft on that little eyrie called the crow's nest, 
echoed it. " All 's well." The second voice was weak 
and quavering. Something came up in my throat — a 
quick unbidden lump of emotion. Was it an echo of old 
journeys and old seas when life was not safe? When 
Columbus sailed into the unknown? And now this vast 
ship, eight hundred and eighty-two feet long, eighty-eight 
feet beam, with huge pits of engines and furnaces and 
polite, veneered first-cabin decks and passengers! 



CHAPTER II 

MISS X. 

IT was ten o'clock the next morning when I arose and 
looked at my watch. I thought it might be eight- 
thirty, or seven. The day was slightly gray with 
spray flying. There was a strong wind. The sea was 
really a boisterous thing, thrashing and heaving in hills 
and hollows. I was thinking of Kipling's " White 
Horses " for a while. There were several things about 
this great ship which were unique. It was a beautiful 
thing all told — ■ its long cherry-wood, paneled halls in the 
first-class section, its heavy porcelain baths, its dainty 
staterooms fitted with lamps, bureaus, writing-desks, 
washstands, closets and the like. I liked the idea of dress- 
ing for dinner and seeing everything quite stately and 
formal. The little be-buttoned call-boys in their tight- 
fitting blue suits amused me. And the bugler who bugled 
for dinner! That was a most musical sound he made, 
trilling in the various quarters gaily, as much as to say, 
" This is a very joyous event, ladies and gentlemen ; we are 
all happy; come, come; it is a delightful feast." I saw 
him one day in the lobby of C deck, his legs spread far 
apart, the bugle to his lips, no evidence of the rolling 
ship in his erectness, bugling heartily. It was like some- 
thing out of an old medieval court or a play. Very 
nice and worth while. 

Absolutely ignorant of this world of the sea, the so- 
cial, domestic, culinary and other economies of a great 
ship like this interested me from the start. It impressed 
me no little that all the servants were English, and that 

i6 



MISS X. 17 

they were, shall I say, polite? — well, if not that, non- 
aggressive. American servants — I could write a whole 
chapter on that, but we have n't any servants in America. 
We don't know how to be servants. It is n't in us ; it 
is n't nice to be a servant ; it is n't democratic ; and spir- 
itually I don't blame us. In America, with our turn for 
mechanics, we shall have to invent something which will 
do away with the need of servants. What it is to be, I 
have n't the faintest idea at present. 

Another thing that impressed and irritated me a little 
was the stolidity of the English countenance as I encoun- 
tered it here on this ship. I did n't know then whether 
it was accidental in this case, or national. There is a 
certain type of Englishman — the robust, rosy-cheeked, 
blue-eyed Saxon — whom I cordially dislike, I think, 
speaking temperamentally and artistically. They are too 
solid, too rosy, too immobile as to their faces, and al- 
together too assured and stary. I don't like them. They 
offend me. They thrust a silly race pride into my face, 
which is n't necessary at all and which I always resent 
with a race pride of my own. It has even occurred to me 
at times that these temperamental race differences could 
be quickly adjusted only by an appeal to arms, which is 
sillier yet. But so goes life. It 's foolish on both sides, 
but I mention it for what it is worth. 

After lunch, which was also breakfast with me, I went 
with the chief engineer through the engine-room. This 
was a pit eighty feet deep, forty feet wide and, perhaps, 
one hundred feet long, filled with machinery. What a 
strange world ! I know absolutely nothing of machinery 
— not a single principle connected with it — and yet I 
am intensely interested. These boilers, pipes, funnels, 
pistons, gages, registers and bright-faced register boards 
speak of a vast technique which to me is tremendously 
impressive. I know scarcely anything of the history of 



i8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

mechanics, but I know what boilers and feed-pipes and 
escape-pipes are, and how comphcated machinery is auto- 
matically oiled and reciprocated, and there my knowledge 
ends. All that I know about the rest is what the race 
knows. There are mechanical and electrical engineers. 
They devised the reciprocating engine for vessels and then 
the turbine. They have worked out the theory of electri- 
cal control and have installed vast systems with a wonder- 
ful economy as to power and space. This deep pit was 
like some vast, sad dream of a fevered mind. It clanked 
and rattled and hissed and squeaked with almost insane 
contrariety ! There were narrow, steep, oil-stained stairs, 
very hot, or very cold and very slippery, that wound 
here and there in strange ways, and if you were not 
careful there were moving rods and wheels to strike 
you. You passed from bridge to bridge under whirling 
wheels, over clanking pistons; passed hot containers; 
passed cold ones. Here men were standing, blue- jump- 
ered assistants in oil-stained caps and gloves — thin 
caps and thick gloves — watching the manceuvers of this 
vast network of steel, far from the pasenger life of the 
vessel. Occasionally they touched something. They 
were down in the very heart or the bowels of this thing, 
away from the sound of the water; away partially from 
the heaviest motion of the ship; listening only to the 
clank, clank and whir, whir and hiss, hiss all day long. 
It is a metal world they live in, a hard, bright metal 
world. Everything is hard, everything fixed, everything 
regular. If they look up, behold a huge, complicated 
scaffolding of steel; noise and heat and regularity. 

I should n't like that, I think. My soul would grow 
weary. It would pall. I like the softness of scenery, 
the haze, the uncertainty of the world outside. Life is 
better than rigidity and fixed motion, I hope. I trust 
the universe is not mechanical, but mystically blind. 



MISS X. 19 

Let 's hope it 's a vague, uncertain, but divine idea. We 
know it is beautiful. It must be so. 

The wind-up of this day occurred in the lounging- or 
reception-room where, after dinner, we all retired to lis- 
ten to the music, and then began one of those really in- 
teresting conversations between Barfleur and Miss X. 
which sometimes illuminate life and make one see things 
differently forever afterward. 

It is going to be very hard for me to define just how this 
could be, but I might say that I had at the moment con- 
siderable intellectual contempt for the point of view which 
the conversation represented. Consider first the Ameri- 
can attitude. With us (not the established rich, but the 
hopeful, ambitious American who has nothing, comes 
from nothing and hopes to be President of the United 
States or John D. Rockefeller) the business of life is 
not living, but achieving. Roughly speaking, we are 
willing to go hungry, dirty, to wait in the cold and fight 
gamely, if in the end we can achieve one or more of the 
seven stars in the human crown of life — social, intel- 
lectual, moral, financial, physical, spiritual or material 
supremacy. Several of the forms of supremacy may 
seem the same, but they are not. Examine them closely. 
The average American is not born to place. He does 
not know what the English sense of order is. We have 
not that national esprit de corps which characterizes 
the English and the French perhaps; certainly the Ger- 
mans. We are loose, uncouth, but, in our way, wonder- 
ful. The spirit of God has once more breathed upon the 
waters. 

Well, the gentleman who was doing the talking in 
this instance and the lady who was coinciding, inciting, 
aiding, abetting, approving and at times leading and dem- 
onstrating, represented two different and yet allied points 
of view. Barfleur is distinctly a product of the Eng- 



20 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

llsh conservative school of thought, a gentleman who 
wishes sincerely he was not so conservative. His house 
is in order. You can feel it. I have always felt it in 
relation to him. His standards and ideals are fixed. 
He knows what life ought to be — how it ought to be 
lived. You would never catch him associating with the 
rag-tag and bobtail of humanity with any keen sense of 
human brotherhood or emotional tenderness of feeling. 
They are human beings, of course. They are in the 
scheme of things, to be sure. But, let it go at that. One 
cannot be considering the state of the underdog at any 
particular time. Government is established to do this 
sort of thing. Statesmen are large, constructive serv- 
ants who are supposed to look after all of us. The 
masses ! Let them behave. Let them accept their state. 
Let them raise no undue row. And let us, above all 
things, have order and peace. 

This is a section of Barfleur — not all, mind you, but 
a section. 

Miss X. — I think I have described her fully enough, 
but I shall add one passing thought. A little experience 
of Europe — considerable of its show places — had 
taught her, or convinced her rather, that America did not 
know how to live. You will hear much of that fact, I 
am afraid, during the rest of these pages, but it is es- 
pecially important just here. My lady, prettily gowned, 
perfectly manicured, going to meet her lover at London 
or Fishguard or Liverpool, is absolutely satisfied that 
America does not know how to live. She herself has al- 
most learned. She is most comfortably provided for at 
present. Anyhow, she has champagne every night at 
dinner. Her equipment in the matter of toilet articles 
and leather traveling bags is all that it should be. The 
latter are colored to suit her complexion and gowns. 
She is scented, polished, looked after, and all men pay 




One of those really interesting conversations between 
Barfleur and Miss X. 



MISS X. 21 

her attention. She is vain, beautiful, and she thinks 
that America is raw, uncouth; that its citizens of whom 
she is one, do not know how to Hve. Quite so. Now 
we come to the point. 

It would be hard to describe this conversation. It be- 
gan with some " have you been's," I think, and concerned 
eating-places and modes of entertainment in London, 
Paris and Monte Carlo. I gathered by degrees, that in 
London, Paris and elsewhere there were a hundred res- 
taurants, a hundred places to live, each finer than the 
other. I heard of liberty of thought and freedom of 
action and pride of motion which made me understand 
that there is a free-masonry which concerns the art of 
living, which is shared only by the initiated. There was 
a world in which conventions, as to morals, have no 
place; in which ethics and religion are tabooed. Art is 
the point. The joys of this world are sex, beauty, food, 
clothing, art. I should say money, of course, but money 
is presupposed. You must have it. 

" Oh, I went to that place one day and then I was 
glad enough to get back to the Ritz at forty francs for 
my room." She was talking of her room by the day, 
and the food, of course, was extra. The other hotel 
had been a little bit quiet or dingy. 

I opened my eyes slightly, for I thought Paris was 
reasonable ; but not so — no more so than New York. 
I understood, if you did the same things. 

"And, oh, the life!" said Miss X. at one point. 
" Americans don't know how to live. They are all en- 
gaged in doing something. They are such beginners. 
They are only interested in money. They don't know. 
I see them in Paris now and then." She lifted her hand. 
" Here in Europe people understand life better. They 
know. They know before they begin how much it will 
take to do the things that they want to do and they start 



22 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

out to make that much — not a fortune — just enough 
to do the things that they want to do. When they get 
that they retire and live/' 

" And what do they do when they live ? " I asked. 
"What do they call living?" 

" Oh, having a nice country-house within a short trav- 
eling distance of London or Paris, and being able to dine 
at the best restaurants and visit the best theaters once or 
twice a week ; to go to Paris or Monte Carlo or Scheven- 
ingen or Ostend two or three or four, or as many times 
a year as they please; to wear good clothes and to be 
thoroughly comfortable." 

" That is not a bad standard," I said, and then I added, 
" And what else do they do ? " 

" And what else should they do ? Isn't that enough ? " 

And there you have the European standard according 
to Miss X. as contrasted with the American standard 
which is, or has been up to this time, something decidedly 
different, I am sure. We have not been so eager to live. 
Our idea has been to work. No American that I have 
ever known has had the idea of laying up just so much, 
a moderate amount, and then retiring and living. He 
has had quite another thought in his mind. The Ameri-' 
can — the average American — I am sure loves power, 
the ability to do something, far more earnestly than he 
loves mere living. He wants to be an ofificer or a direc- 
tor of something, a poet, anything you please for the 
sake of being it — not for the sake of living. He loves 
power, authority, to be able to say, " Go and he goeth," 
or, " Come and he cometh." The rest he will waive. 
Mere comfort? You can have that. But even that, 
according to Miss X., was not enough for her. She had 
told me before, and this conversation brought it out 
again, that her thoughts were of summer and winter 
resorts, exquisite creations in the way of clothing, dia- 



MISS X. 23 

monds, open balconies of restaurants commanding charm- 
ing vistas, gambling tables at Monte Carlo, Aix-les-Bains, 
Ostend and elsewhere, to say nothing of absolutely un- 
trammeled sex relations. English conventional women 
were frumps and fools. They had never learned how to 
live ; they had never understood what the joy of freedom 
in sex was. Morals — they are built up on a lack of 
imagination and physical vigor ; tenderness — well, you 
have to take care of yourself ; duty — there isn't any such 
thing. If there is, it 's one's duty to get along and have 
money and be happy. 



CHAPTER III 

AT FISHGUARD 

WHILE I was lying in my berth the fifth morn- 
ing, I heard the room steward outside my 
door tell some one that he thought we reached 
Fishguard at one-thirty. 

I packed my trunks, thinking of this big ship and the 
fact that my trip was over and that never again could I 
cross the Atlantic for the first time. A queer world this. 
We can only do any one thing significantly once. I re- 
member when I first went to Chicago, I remember when 
I first went to St. Louis, I remember when I first went 
to New York. Other trips there were, but they are lost 
in vagueness. But the first time of any important thing 
sticks and lasts; it comes back at times and haunts you 
with its beauty and its sadness. You know so well you 
cannot do that any more; and, like a clock, it ticks and 
tells you that life is moving on. I shall never come to 
England any more for the first time. That is gone and 
done for — worse luck. 

So I packed — will you believe it ? — a little sadly. 
I think most of us are a little silly at times, only we are 
cautious enough to conceal it. There is in me the spirit 
of a lonely child somewhere and it clings pitifully to 
the hand of its big mama, Life, and cries when it is 
frightened; and then there is a coarse, vulgar ex- 
terior which fronts the world defiantly and bids all and 
sundry to go to the devil. It sneers and barks and jeers 
bitterly at times, and guffaws and cackles and has a 
joyous time laughing at the follies of others. 

Then I went to hunt Barfleur to find out how I should 

24 



AT FISHGUARD 25 

do. How much was I to give the deck-steward; how 
much to the bath-steward; how much to the room- 
steward; how much to the dining-room steward; how 
much to " boots," and so on. 

" Look here ! " observed that most efficient of all man- 
agerial souls that I have ever known. " I '11 tell you 
what you do. No — I '11 write it." And he drew forth 
an ever ready envelope. *' Deck-steward — so much," 
it read, " Room steward — so much — " etc. 

I went forthwith and paid them, relieving my soul of 
a great weight. Then I came on deck and found that I 
had forgotten to pack my ship blanket, and a steamer 
rug, which I forthwith went and packed. Then I dis- 
covered that I had no place for my derby hat save on 
my head, so I went back and packed my cap. Then I 
thought I had lost one of my brushes, which I had n't, 
though I did lose one of my stylo pencils. Finally I 
came on deck and sang coon songs with Miss X., sitting 
in our steamer chairs. The low shore of Ireland had 
come into view with two faint hills in the distance and 
these fascinated me. I thought I should have some 
slight emotion on seeing land again, but I did n't. It was 
gray and misty at first, but presently the sun came out 
beautifully clear and the day was as warm as May in 
New York. I felt a sudden elation of spirits with the 
coming of the sun, and I began to think what a lovely 
time I was going to have in Europe. 

Miss X. was a little more friendly this morning than 
heretofore. She was a tricky creature — coy, uncertain 
and hard to please. She liked me intellectually and 
thought I was able, but her physical and emotional predi- 
lections, so far as men are concerned, did not include 
me. 

We rejoiced together singing, and then we fought. 
There is a directness between experienced intellects which 



26 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

waves aside all formalities. She had seen a lot of life; 
so had I. 

She said she thought she would like to walk a little, and 
we strolled back along the heaving deck to the end 
of the first cabin section and then to the stern. When 
we reached there the sky was overcast again, for it was 
one of those changeable mornings which is now gray, 
now bright, now misty. Just now the heavens were 
black and lowering with soft, rain-charged clouds, like 
the wool of a smudgy sheep. The sea was a rich green 
in consequence — not a clear green, but a dark, muddy, 
oil-green. It rose and sank in its endless unrest and one 
or two boats appeared — a lightship, anchored out all 
alone against the lowering waste, and a small, black, pas- 
senger steamer going somewhere. 

" I wish my path In life were as white as that and as 
straight," observed Miss X., pointing to our white, pro- 
peller-churned wake which extended back for half a mile 
or more. 

" Yes," I observed, " you do and you don't. You do, 
if it wouldn't cost you trouble in the future — impose 
the straight and narrow, as it were." 

" Oh, you don't know," she exclaimed irritably, that 
ugly fighting light coming into her eyes, which I had 
seen there several times before. " You don't know what 
my life has been. I have n't been so bad. We all of us 
do the best we can. I have done the best I could, con- 
sidering." 

" Yes, yes," I observed, " you 're ambitious and alive 
and you 're seeking — Heaven knows what ! You would 
be adorable with your pretty face and body if you were 
not so — so sophisticated. The trouble with you is — " 

" Oh, look at that cute little boat out there ! " She was 
talking of the lightship. " I always feel sorry for a 



AT FISHGUARD 27 

poor little thing like that, set aside from the main tide 
of life and left lonely — with no one to care for it." 

" The trouble with you is," I went on, seizing this 
new remark as an additional pretext for analysis, 
" you 're romantic, not sympathetic. You 're interested 
in that poor little lonely boat because its state is romantic ; 
not pathetic. It may be pathetic, but that is n't the point 
with you." 

" Well," she said, " if you had had all the hard knocks 
I have had, you would n't be sympathetic either. I 've 
suffered, I have. My illusions have been killed dead." 

" Yes. Love is over with you. Yuii can't love any 
more. You can like to be loved, that 's all. If it were 
the other way about — " 

I paused to think how really lovely she would be with 
her narrow lavender eyelids ; her delicate, almost re- 
trousse, little nose; her red cupid's-bow mouth. 

" Oh," she exclaimed, with a gesture of almost re- 
ligious adoration. " I cannot love any one person any 
more, but I can love love, and I do — all the delicate 
things it stands for." 

"Flowers," I observed, "jewels, automobiles, hotel 
bills, fine dresses." 

" Oh, you 're brutal. I hate you. You 've said the 
crudest, meanest things that have ever been said to me." 

" But they 're so." 

" I don't care. Why should n't I be hard ? Why 
should n't I love to live and be loved? Look at my life. 
See what I 've had." 

" You like me, in a way ? " I suggested. 

" I admire your intellect." 

" Quite so. And others receive the gifts of your per- 
sonality." 

" I can't help it. I can't be mean to the man I 'm with. 



28 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

He 's good to me. I won't. I 'd be sinning against the 
only conscience I have." 

" Then you have a conscience ? " 

" Oh, you go to the devil ! " 

But we didn't separate by any means. 

They were blowing a bugle for lunch when we came 
back, and down we went. Barfleur was already at table. 
The orchestra was playing Auld Lang Syne, Home Sweet 
Home, Dixie and the Suwannee River. It even played 
one of those delicious American rags which I love so 
much — the Oceana Roll. I felt a little lump in my 
throat at Auld Lang Syne and Dixie, and together Miss 
X. and I hummed the Oceana Roll as it was played. 
One of the girl passengers came about with a plate to 
obtain money for the members of the orchestra, and 
half-crowns were universally deposited. Then I started 
to eat my dessert; but Barfleur, who had hurried off, 
came back to interfere. 

"Come, come!" (He was always most emphatic.) 
" You 're missing it all. We 're landing." 

I thought we were leaving at once. The eye behind 
the monocle was premonitory of some great loss to me. 
I hurried on deck — to thank his artistic and managerial 
instinct instantly I arrived there. Before me was Fish- 
guard and the Welsh coast, and to my dying day I shall 
never forget it. Imagine, if you please, a land-locked 
harbor, as green as grass in this semi-cloudy, semi-gold- 
bathed afternoon, with a half-moon of granite scarp 
rising sheer and clear from the green waters to the low 
gray clouds overhead. On its top I could see fields laid 
out in pretty squares or oblongs, and at the bottom of 
what to me appeared to be the east end of the semi-circle, 
was a bit of gray scruff, which was the village no doubt. 
On the green water were several other boats — steamers, 
much smaller, with red stacks, black sides, white rails and 



AT FISHGUARD 29 

funnels — bearing a family resemblance to the one we 
were on. There was a long pier extending out into the 
water from what I took to be the village and something 
farther inland that looked like a low shed. 

This black hotel of a ship, so vast, so graceful, now 
rocking gently in the enameled bay, was surrounded this 
hour by wheeling, squeaking gulls. I always like the 
squeak of a gull; it reminds me of a rusty car wheel, and, 
somehow, it accords with a lone, rocky coast. Here they 
were, their little feet coral red, their beaks jade gray, 
their bodies snowy white or sober gray, wheeling and 
crying — " my heart remembers how." I looked at them 
and that old intense sensation of joy came back — the 
wish to fly, the wish to be young, the wish to be happy, 
the wish to be loved. 

But, my scene, beautiful as it was, was slipping 
away. One of the pretty steamers I had noted lying on 
the water some distance away, was drawing alongside — ■ 
to get mails, first, they said. There were hurrying and 
shuffling people on all the first cabin decks. Barfleur 
was forward looking after his luggage. The captain 
stood on the bridge in his great gold-braided blue over- 
coat. There were mail chutes being lowered from our 
giant vessel's side, and bags and trunks and boxes and 
bales were then sent scuttling down. I saw dozens of 
uniformed men and scores of ununiformed laborers 
briskly handling these in the sunshine. My fellow pas- 
sengers in their last hurrying hour interested me, for I 
knew I should see them no more ; except one or two, 
perhaps. 

While we were standing here I turned to watch an 
Englishman, tall, assured, stalky, stary. He had been 
soldiering about for some time, examining this, that and 
the other in his critical, dogmatic British way. He had 
leaned over the side and inspected the approaching 



30 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

lighters, he had stared critically and unpoetically at the 
gulls which were here now by hundreds, he had observed 
the landing toilet of the ladies, the material equipment 
of the various men, and was quite evidently satisfied that 
he himself was perfect, complete. He was aloof, chilly, 
decidedly forbidding and judicial. 

Finally a cabin steward came hurrying out to him. 
" Did you mean to leave the things you left in your 
room unpacked?" he asked. The Englishman started, 
stiffened, stared. I never saw a self-sufficient man so 
completely shaken out of his poise. 

" Things in my room unpacked ? " he echoed. " What 
room are you talking about ? My word ! " 

" There are three drawers full of things in there, sir, 
unpacked, and they 're waiting for your luggage now, 
sir!" 

" My word! " he repeated, grieved, angered, perplexed. 
"My word! I'm sure I packed everything. Three 
drawers full ! My word ! " He bustled off stiffly. The 
attendant hastened cheerfully after. It almost gave me a 
chill as I thought of his problem. And they hurry so at 
Fishguard. He was well paid out, as the English say, 
for being so stalky and superior. 

Then the mail and trunks being off, and that boat 
having veered away, another and somewhat smaller one 
came alongside and we first, and then the second class 
passengers, went aboard, and I watched the great ship 
growing less and less as we pulled away from it. 
It was immense from alongside, a vast skyscraper of 
a ship. At a hundred feet, it seemed not so large, 
but more graceful; at a thousand feet, all its exquisite 
lines were perfect — its bulk not so great, but the 
pathos of its departing beauty wonderful ; at two thou- 
sand feet, it was still beautiful against the granite ring 
of the harbor; but, alas, it was moving. The cap- 



AT FISHGUARD 31 

tain was an almost indistinguishable spot upon his 
bridge. The stacks — in their way gorgeous — took 
on beautiful proportions. I thought, as we veered in 
near the pier and the ship turned within her length or 
thereabouts and steamed out, I had never seen a more 
beautiful sight. Her convoy of gulls was still about 
her. Her smoke-stacks flung back their graceful stream- 
ers. The propeller left a white trail of foam. I asked 
some one: " When does she get to Liverpool? " 

" At two in the morning." 

"And when do the balance of the passengers land?" 
(We had virtually emptied the first cabin.) 

" At seven, I fancy." 

Just then the lighter bumped against the dock. I 
walked under a long, low train-shed covering four tracks, 
and then I saw my first English passenger train — a semi- 
octagonal-looking affair — (the ends of the cars cer- 
tainly looked as though they had started out to be 
octagonal) and there were little doors on the sides labeled 
" First," " First," " First." On the side, at the top of 
the car, was a longer sign : ** Cunard Ocean Special — 
London — Fishguard." 



CHAPTER IV 

SERVANTS AND POLITENESS 

RIGHT here I propose to interpolate my second dis- 
sertation on the servant question and I can safely 
promise, I am sure, that it will not be the last. 
One night, not long before, in dining with a certain 
Baron N. and Barfleur at the Ritz in New York this 
matter of the American servant came up in a conversa- 
tional way. Baron N. was a young exquisite of Ber- 
lin and other European capitals. He was one of Bar- 
fleur's idle fancies. Because we were talking about 
America in general I asked them both what, to them, 
was the most offensive or objectionable thing about 
America. One said, expectorating; the other said, the 
impoliteness of servants. On the ship going over, at 
Fishguard, in the train from Fishguard to London, at 
London and later in Barfleur's country house I saw what 
the difference was. Of course I had heard these differ- 
ences discussed before ad lib. for years, but hearing is 
not believing. Seeing and experiencing is. 

On shipboard I noticed for the first time in my life that 
there was an aloofness about the service rendered by the 
servants which was entirely different from that which 
we know in America. They did not look at one so 
brutally and critically as does the American menial ; their 
eyes did not seem to say, " I am your equal or better," 
and their motions did not indicate that they were doing 
anything unwillingly. In America — and I am a good 
American — I have always had the feeling that the 
American hotel or house servant or store clerk — particu- 

32 



SERVANTS AND POLITENESS 33 

larly store clerk — male or female — was doing me a 
great favor if he did anything at all for me. As for 
train-men and passenger-boat assistants, I have never 
been able to look upon them as servants at all. Mostly 
they have looked on me as an interloper, and as some one 
who should be put off the train, instead of assisted in 
going anywhere. American conductors are Czars ; 
American brakemen and train hands are Grand Dukes, 
at least ; a porter is little less than a highwayman ; and a 
hotel clerk — God forbid that we should mention him in 
the same breath with any of the foregoing! 

However, as I was going on to say, when I went 
aboard the English ship in question I felt this burden of 
serfdom to the American servant lifted. These people, 
strange to relate, did not seem anxious to fight with me. 
They were actually civil. They did not stare me out of 
countenance ; they did not order me gruffly about. And, 
really, I am not a princely soul looking for obsequious 
service. I am, I fancy, a very humble-minded person 
when traveling or living, anxious to go briskly forward, 
not to be disturbed too much and allowed to live in quiet 
and seclusion. 

The American servant is not built for that. One must 
have great social or physical force to command him. At 
times he needs literally to be cowed by threats of physical 
violence. You are paying him? Of course you are. 
You help do that when you pay your hotel bill or buy 
your ticket, or make a purchase, but he does not know 
that. The officials of the companies for whom he works 
do not appear to know. If they did, I don't know that 
they would be able to do anything about it. You can not 
make a whole people over by issuing a book of rules. 
Americans are free men ; they don't want to be servants ; 
they have despised the idea for years. I think the early 
Americans who lived in America after the Revolution — ■ 



34 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



the anti-Tory element — thought that after the war and 
having won their nationahty there was to be an end 
of servants. I think they associated labor of this kind 
with slavery, and they thought when England had been 
defeated all these other things, such as menial service, 
had been defeated also. Alas, superiority and inferiority 
have not yet been done away with — wholly. There are 
the strong and the weak; the passionate and passionless; 
the hungry and the well-fed. There are those who still 
think that life is something which can be put into a mold 
and adjusted to a theory, but I am not one of them. I 
cannot view life or human nature save as an expression 
of contraries — in fact, I think that is what life is. I 
know there can be no sense of heat without cold; no 
fullness without emptiness; no force without resistance; 
no anything, in short, without its contrary. Con- 
sequently, I cannot see how there can be great men with- 
out little ones; wealth without poverty; social move- 
ment without willing social assistance. No high with- 
out a low, is my idea, and I would have the low be 
intelligent, efficient, useful, well paid, well looked after. 
And I would have the high be sane, kindly, considerate, 
useful, of good report and good-will to all men. 

Years of abuse and discomfort have made me 
rather antagonistic to servants, but I felt no reason- 
able grounds for antagonism here. They were behaving 
properly. They were n't staring at me. I did n't catch 
them making audible remarks behind my back. They 
were not descanting unfavorably upon any of my fellow 
passengers. Things were actually going smoothly and 
nicely and they seemed rather courteous about it all. 

Yes, and it was so in the dining-saloon, in the bath, on 
deck, everywhere, with " yes, sirs," and " thank you, 
sirs," and two fingers raised to cap visors occasionally 
for good measure. Were they acting? Was this a 



i 



SERVANTS AND POLITENESS 35 

fiercely suppressed class I was looking upon here? I 
could scarcely believe it. They looked too comfortable. 
I saw them associating with each other a great deal. I 
heard scraps of their conversation. It was all peaceful 
and genial and individual enough. They were, appar- 
ently, leading unrestricted private lives. However, I re- 
served judgment until I should get to England, but at 
Fishguard it was quite the same and more also. These 
railway guards and porters and conductors were not our 
railway conductors, brakemen and porters, by a long shot. 
They were different in their attitude, texture and 
general outlook on life. Physically I should say that 
American railway employees are superior to the European 
brand. They are, on the whole, better fed, or at least 
better set up. They seem bigger to me, as I recall them ; 
harder, stronger. The English railway employee seems 
smaller and more refined physically — less vigorous. 

But as to manners: Heaven save the mark! These 
people are civil. They are nice. They are willing. 
"Have you a porter, sir? Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! 
This way, sir! No trouble about that, sir! In a mo- 
ment, sir ! Certainly, sir ! Very well, sir ! " I heard 
these things on all sides and they were like balm to a 
fevered brain. Life did n't seem so strenuous with these 
people about. They were actually trying to help me 
along. I was led; I was shown; I was explained to. I 
got under way without the least distress and I began 
actually to feel as though I was being coddled. Why, I 
thought, these people are going to spoil me. I 'm going 
to like them. And I had rather decided that I would n't 
like the English. Why, I don't know; for I never read 
a great English novel that I did n't more or less like all 
of the characters in it. Hardy's lovely country people 
have warmed the cockles of my heart ; George Moore's 
English characters have appealed to me. And here was 



36 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Barfleur. But the way the train employees bundled me 
into my seat and got my bags in after or before me, and 
said, " We shall be starting now in a few minutes, sir," 
and called quietly and pleadingly — not yelling, mind 
you — " Take your seats, please," delighted me. 

I did n't like the looks of the cars. I can prove in a 
moment by any traveler that our trains are infinitely more 
luxurious. I can see where there is n't heat enough, and 
where one lavatory for men and women on any train, 
let alone a first-class one, is an abomination, and so on 
and so forth; but still, and notwithstanding, I say the 
English railway service is better. Why ? Because it 's 
more human ; it 's more considerate. You are n't driven 
and urged to step lively and called at in loud, harsh 
voices and made to feel that you are being tolerated 
aboard something that was never made for you at all, 
but for the employees of the company. In England the 
trains are run for the people, not the people for the trains. 
And now that I have that one distinct difference between 
England and America properly emphasized I feel much 
better. 



CHAPTER V 

THE RIDE TO LONDON 

AT last the train was started and we were off. 
The track was not so wide, if I am not mistaken, 
as ours, and the httle freight or goods cars were 
positively ridiculous — mere wheelbarrows, by compari- 
son with the American type. As for the passenger cars, 
when I came to examine them, they reminded me of 
some of our fine street cars that run from, say Schenec- 
tady to Gloversville, or from Muncie to Marion, Indiana. 
They were the first-class cars, too — the English Pull- 
mans ! The train started out briskly and you could feel 
that it did not have the powerful weight to it which the 
American train has. An American Pullman creaks 
audibly, just as a great ship does when it begins to 
move. An American engine begins to pull slowly be- 
cause it has something to pull — like a team with a 
heavy load. I did n't feel that I was in a train half so 
much as I did that I was in a string of baby carriages. 

Miss X. and her lover. Miss E. and her maid, Barfleur 
and I comfortably filled one little compartment; and now 
w-e were actually moving, and I began to look out at once 
to see what English scenery was really like. It was not 
at all strange to me, for in books and pictures I had seen 
it all my life. But here were the actual hills and valleys, 
the actual thatched cottages, and the actual castles or 
moors or lovely country vistas, and I was seeing them! 

As I think of it now I can never be quite sufficiently 
grateful to Barfleur for a certain affectionate, thoughtful, 
sympathetic regard for my every possible mood on this oc- 
casion. This was my first trip to this England of which, 

Z7 



38 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

of course, he was intensely proud. He was so humanly 
anxious that I should not miss any of its charms or, if 
need be, defects. He wanted me to be able to judge it 
fairly and humanly and to see the eventual result sieved 
through my temperament. The soul of attention; the 
soul of courtesy; patient, long-suffering, humane, gentle. 
How I have tried the patience of that man at times! 
An iron mood he has on occasion; a stoic one, 
always. Gentle, even, smiling, living a rule and a 
standard. Every thought of him produces a grateful 
smile. Yet he has his defects — plenty of them. Here 
he was at my elbow, all the way to London, momentarily 
suggesting that I should not miss the point, whatever 
the point might be, at the moment. He was helpful, 
really interested, and above all and at all times, warmly 
human. 

We had been just two hours getting from the boat to 
the train. It was three-thirty when the train began to 
move, and from the lovely misty sunshine of the morn- 
ing the sky had become overcast with low, gray — almost 
black — rain clouds. I looked at the hills and valleys. 
They told me we were in Wales. And, curiously, as we 
sped along first came Wordsworth into my mind, and 
then Thomas Hardy. I thought of Wordsworth first 
because these smooth, kempt hills, wet with the rain and 
static with deep gray shadows, suggested him. Eng- 
land owes so much to William Wordsworth, I think. So 
far as I can see, he epitomized in his verses this sweet, 
simple hominess that tugs at the heart-strings like some 
old call that one has heard before. My father was a 
German, my mother of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, 
and yet there is a pull here in this Shakespearian-Words- 
worthian-Hardyesque world which is precisely like the 
call of a tender mother to a child. I can't resist it. I 
love it ; and I am not English but radically American. 



THE RIDE TO LONDON 39 

I understand that Hardy is not so well thought of in 
England as he might be — that, somehow, some large 
conservative class thinks that his books are immoral 
or destructive. I should say the English would better 
make much of Thomas Hardy while he is alive. He is 
one of their great traditions. His works are beautiful. 
The spirit of all the things he has done or attempted is 
lovely. He is a master mind, simple, noble, dignified, 
serene. He is as fine as any of the English cathedrals. 
St. Paul's or Canterbury has no more significance to 
me than Thomas Hardy. I saw St. Paul's. I wish I 
could see the spirit of Thomas Hardy indicated in some 
such definite way. And yet I do not. Monuments do not 
indicate great men. But the fields and valleys of a 
country suggest them. 

At twenty or thirty miles from Fishguard we came 
to some open water — an arm of the sea, I understood 

— the Bay of Bristol, where boats were, and tall, rain- 
gutted hills that looked like tumbled-down castles. 
Then came more open country — moorland, I suppose 

— with some sheep, once a flock of black ones ; and then 
the lovely alternating hues of this rain-washed world. 
The water under these dark clouds took on a peculiar 
luster. It looked at times like burnished steel — at times 
like muddy lead. I felt my heart leap up as I thought 
of our own George Inness and what he would have done 
with these scenes and what the English Turner has done, 
though he preferred, as a rule, another key. 

At four-thirty one of the charming English trainmen 
came and asked if we would have tea in the dining-car. 
We would. We arose and in a few moments were enter- 
ing one of those dainty little basket cars. The tables 
were covered with white linen and simple, pretty china 
and a silver tea-service. It was n't as if you were travel- 
ing at all. I felt as though I were stopping at the house 



40 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

of a friend; or as though I were in the cozy corner of 
some well-known and friendly inn. Tea was served. 
We ate toast and talked cheerfully. 

This whole trip — the landscape, the dining-car, this 
cozy tea, Miss X. and her lover, Miss E. and Barfleur — 
finally enveloped my emotional fancy like a dream. 
I realized that I was experiencing a novel situation 
which would not soon come again. The idea of this 
pretty mistress coming to England to join her lover, 
and so frankly admitting her history and her pur- 
pose, rather took my mind as an intellectual treat. 
You really don't often get to see this sort of thing. 
I don't It 's Gallic in its flavor, to me. Barfleur, 
being a man of the world, took it as a matter of course 
— • his sole idea being, I fancy, that the refinement of 
personality and thought involved in the situation were 
sufficient to permit him to tolerate it. I always judge 
his emotion by that one gleaming eye behind the monocle. 
The other does not take my attention so much. I knew 
from his attitude that ethics and morals and things like 
that had nothing to do with his selection of what 
he would consider interesting personal compan- 
ionship. Were they interesting? Could they tell him 
something new? Would they amuse him? Were they 
nice — socially, in their clothing, in their manners, in 
the hundred little material refinements which make up 
a fashionable lady or gentleman? If so, welcome. If 
not, hence. And talent! Oh, yes, he had a keen eye 
for talent. And he loves the exceptional and will ob- 
viously do anything and everything within his power 
to foster it. 

Having started so late, it grew nearly dark after tea 
and the distant landscapes were not so easy to descry. 
We came presently, in the mist, to a place called Car- 
marthen, I think, where were great black stacks and 



THE RIDE TO LONDON 41 

flaming forges and lights burning wistfully in the dark; 
and then to another similar place, Swansea, and finally 
to a third, Cardiff — great centers of manufacture, I 
should judge, for there were flaming lights from forges 
(great, golden gleams from open furnaces) and dark 
blue smoke, visible even at this hour, from tall stacks 
overhead, and gleaming electric lights like bright, lucent 
diamonds. 

I never see this sort of place but I think of Pittsburgh 
and Youngstown and the coke ovens of western Pennsyl- 
vania along the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. I 
shall never forget the first time I saw Pittsburgh and 
Youngstown and saw how coke was fired. It was on 
my way to New York. I had never seen any mountains 
before and suddenly, after the low, flat plains of Indiana 
and Ohio, with their pretty little wooden villages so 
suggestive of the new life of the New World, we rushed 
into Youngstown and then the mountains of western 
Pennsylvania (the Alleghanies). It was somewhat like 
this night coming from Fishguard, only it was not so 
rainy. The hills rose tall and green ; the forge stacks 
of Pittsburgh flamed with a red gleam, mile after 
mile, until I thought it was the most wonderful sight 
I had ever seen. And then came the coke ovens, 
beyond Pittsburgh mile after mile of them, glowing 
ruddily down in the low valleys between the tall 
hills, where our train was following a stream-bed. 
It seemed a great, sad, heroic thing then, to me, 
— plain day labor. Those common, ignorant men, 
working before flaming forges, stripped to the waist in 
some instances, fascinated my imagination. I have al- 
ways marveled at the inequalities of nature — the way 
it will give one man a low brow and a narrow mind, a 
narrow round of thought, and make a slave or horse of 
him, and another a light, nimble mind, a quick wit and 



42 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



air and make a gentleman of him. No human being 
can solve either the question of ability or utility. Is your 
gentleman useful? Yes and no, perhaps. Is your la- 
borer useful? Yes and no, perhaps. I should say ob- 
viously yes. But see the differences in the reward of 
labor — physical labor. One eats his hard-earned crust 
in the sweat of his face; the other picks at his surfeit 
of courses and wonders why this or that does n't taste 
better. I did not make my mind. I did not make my 
art. I cannot choose my taste except by predestined 
instinct, and yet here I am sitting in a comfortable 
English home, as I write, commiserating the poor work- 
ing man. I indict nature here and now, as I always do 
and always shall do, as being aimless, pointless, unfair, 
unjust. I see in the whole thing no scheme but an ac- 
cidental one — no justice save accidental justice. Now 
and then, in a way, some justice is done, but it is acci- 
dental; no individual man seems to will it He can't. 
He does n't know how. He can't think how. And 
there 's an end of it. 

But these queer, weird, hard, sad, drab manufacturing 
cities — what great writer has yet sung the song of them? 
Truly I do not recall one at present clearly. Dickens 
gives some suggestion of what he considered the 
misery of the poor; and in " Les Miserables " there 
is a touch of grim poverty and want here and there. 
But this is something still dififerent. This is creative 
toil on a vast scale, and it is a lean, hungry, savage, 
animal to contemplate. I know it is because I have stud- 
ied personally Fall River, Patterson and Pittsburgh, and 
I know what I 'm talking about. Life runs at a gaunt 
level in those places. It 's a rough, hurtling world of 
fact. I suppose it is not any different in England. I 
looked at the manufacturing towns as we flashed by in 
the night and got the same feeling of sad commiseration 



1 



THE RIDE TO LONDON 43 

and unrest. The homes looked poor and they had a 
deadly sameness; the streets were narrow and poorly 
lighted. I was eager to walk over one of these towns 
foot by foot. I have the feeling that the poor and the 
ignorant and the savage are somehow great artistically. 
I have always had it. Millet saw it when he painted 
" The Man with the Hoe." These drab towns are 
grimly wonderful to me. They sing a great diapason of 
misery. I feel hunger and misery there; I feel lust and 
murder and life, sick of itself, stewing in its own juice; 
I feel women struck in the face by brutal men ; and sod- 
den lives too low and weak to be roused by any storm of 
woe. I fancy there are hungry babies and dying mothers 
and indifferent bosses and noble directors somewhere, 
not caring, not knowing, not being able to do anything 
about it, perhaps, if they did. I could weep just 
at the sight of a large, drab, hungry manufacturing 
town. I feel sorry for ignorant humanity. I wish I 
knew how to raise the low foreheads; to put the clear 
light of intellect into sad, sodden eyes. I wish there 
weren't any blows, any hunger, any tears. I wish peo- 
ple did n't have to long bitterly for just the little thin, 
bare necessities of this world. But I know, also, that 
life would n't be as vastly dramatic and marvelous with- 
out them. Perhaps I 'm wrong. I 've seen some real 
longing in my time, though. I 've longed myself and 
I 've seen others die longing. 

Between Carmarthen and Cardiff and some other 
places where this drab, hungry world seemed to stick 
its face into the window, I listened to much conversation 
about the joyous side of living in Paris, Monte Carlo, 
Ostend and elsewhere. I remember once I turned from 
the contemplation of a dark, sad, shabby world scut- 
tling by in the night and rain to hear Miss E. telling of 
some Parisian music-hall favorite — I '11 call her Carmen 



44 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

— ' rivaling another Parisian music-hall favorite by the 
name of Diane, let us say, at Monte Carlo. Of course 
it is understood that they were women of loose virtue. 
Of course it is understood that they had fine, white, 
fascinating bodies and lovely faces and that they were 
physically ideal. Of course it is understood that they 
were marvelous mistresses and that money was flowing 
freely from some source or other — perhaps from fac- 
tory worlds like these — to let them work their idle, 
sweet wills. Anyhow they were gambling, racing, dis- 
porting themselves at Monte Carlo and all at once they 
decided to rival each other in dress. Or perhaps it was 
that they did n't decide to, but just began to, which is 
much more natural and human. 

As I caught it, with my nose pressed to the carriage 
window and the sight of rain and mist in my eyes, 
Carmen would come down one night in splendid white 
silk, perhaps, her bare arms and perfect neck and hair 
flashing priceless jewels; and then the fair Diane would 
arrive a little later with her body equally beautifully 
arrayed in some gorgeous material, her white arms 
and neck and hair equally resplendent. Then the next 
night the gowns would be of still more marvelous ma- 
terial and artistry, and more jewels — every night love- 
lier gowns and more costly jewels, until one of these 
women took all her jewels, to the extent of millions of 
francs, I presume, and, arraying her maid gorgeously, 
put all the jewels on her and sent her into the casino or 
the ballroom or the dining-room — wherever it was — • 
and she herself followed, in — let us hope — plain, 
jewelless black silk, with her lovely flesh showing volup- 
tuously against it. And the other lady was there, oh, 
much to her chagrin and despair now, of course, decked 
with all her own splendid jewels to the extent of an 



THE RIDE TO LONDON 45 

equally large number of millions of francs, and so the 
rivalry was ended. 

It was a very pretty story of pride and vanity and I 
liked it. But just at this interesting moment, one of those 
great blast furnaces, which I have been telling you 
about and which seemed to stretch for miles beside the 
track, flashed past in the night, its open red furnace 
doors looking like rubies, and the frosted windows of 
its lighted shops looking like opals, and the fluttering 
street lamps and glittering arc lights looking like pearls 
and diamonds ; and I said : behold ! these are the only 
jewels of the poor and from these come the others. And 
to a certain extent, in the last analysis and barring that 
unearned gift of brain which some have without asking 
and others have not at all, so they do. 

It was seven or eight when we reached Paddington. 
For one moment, when I stepped out of the car, the 
thought came to me with a tingle of vanity — I have 
come by land and sea, three thousand miles to London ! 
Then it was gone again. It was strange — this scene. 
I recognized at once the various London types carica- 
tured in Punch, and Pick Me Up, and The Sketch, and 
elsewhere. I saw a world of cabs and 'busses, of por- 
ters, gentlemen, policemen, and citizens generally. I 
saw characters — strange ones — that brought back 
Dickens and Du Maurier and W. W. Jacobs. The words 
" Booking Office " and the typical London policeman took 
my eye. I strolled about, watching the crowd till it was 
time for us to board our train for the country; 
and eagerly I nosed about, trying to sense London from 
this vague, noisy touch of it. I can't indicate how 
the peculiar-looking trains made me feel. Human- 
ity is so very different in so many little unessential 
things — so utterly the same in all the large ones. I 



46 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

could see that it might be just as well or better to call 
a ticket office a booking office; or to have three classes 
of carriages instead of two, as with us; or to have car- 
riages instead of cars; or trams instead of street rail- 
ways; or lifts instead of elevators. What difference 
does it make? Life is the same old thing. Neverthe- 
less there was a tremendous difference between the 
London and the New York atmosphere — that I could 
see and feel. 

" A few days at my place in the country will be just 
the thing for you," Barfleur was saying. " I sent a 
wireless to Dora tO' have a fire in the hall and in your 
room. You might as well see a bit of rural England 
first." 

He gleamed on me with his monocled eye in a very 
encouraging manner. 

We waited about quite awhile for a local or suburban 
which would take us to Bridgely Level, and having en- 
sconced ourselves first class — as fitting my arrival — 
Barfleur fell promptly to sleep and I mused with my 
window open, enjoying the country and the cool night 
air. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BARFLEUR FAMILY 

I AM writing these notes on Tuesday, November 
twenty-eighth, very close to a grate fire in a pretty 
little sitting-room in an English country house 
about twenty-five miles from London, and I am very 
chilly. 

We reached this place by some winding road, inscru- 
table in the night, and I wondered keenly what sort of an 
atmosphere it would have. The English suburban or 
country home of the better class has always been a con- 
crete thought to me — rather charming on the whole. A 
carriage brought us, with all the bags and trunks care- 
fully looked after (in England you always keep your 
luggage with you), and we were met in the hall by the 
maid who took our coats and hats and brought us some- 
thing to drink. There was a small fire glowing in the 
fireplace in the entrance hall, but it was so small — cheer- 
ful though it was — that I wondered why Barfleur had 
taken all the trouble to send a wireless from the sea to 
have it there. It seems it is a custom, in so far as his 
house is concerned, not to have it. But having heard 
something of English fires and English ideas of warmth, 
I was not greatly surprised. 

" I am going to be cold," I said to myself, at once. " I 
know it. The atmosphere is going to be cold and raw 
and I am going to suffer greatly. It will be the devil 
and all to write." 

I fancy this is a very fair and pretty example of the 
average country home near London, and it certainly 
lacks none of the appointments which might be considered 

47 



48 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

worthy of a comfortable home; but it is as cold as a 
sepulcher, and I can't understand the evoluted system 
of procedure which has brought about any such uncom- 
fortable state and maintains it as satisfactory. These 
Britons are actually warm when the temperature in the 
room is somewhere between forty-five and fifty and they 
go about opening doors and windows with the idea that 
the rooms need additional airing. They build you small, 
weak coal fires in large, handsome fireplaces, and then 
if the four or five coals huddled together are managing 
to keep themselves warm by glowing, they tell you that 
everything is all right (or stroll about, at least, looking 
as though it were). Doors are left open; the casement 
windows flung out, everything done to give the place air 
and draughtiness. 

" Now," said my host, with his usual directness of 
speech, as I stood with my back to the hall fireplace, 
" I think it is best that you should go to bed at once and 
get a good night's rest. In the morning you shall have 
your breakfast at whatever hour you say. Your bath 
will be brought you a half or three-quarters of an hour 
before you appear at table, so that you will have ample 
time to shave and dress. I shall be here until eleven- 
fifteen to see how you are getting along, after which I 
shall go to the city. You shall have a table here, or 
wherever you like, and the maid will serve your luncheon 
punctually at two o'clock. At half past four your tea 
will be brought to you, in case you are here. In the 
evening we dine at seven-thirty. I shall be down on the 
five fifty-two train." 

So he proceeded definitel}' to lay out my life for me 
and I had to smile. " That vast established order which 
is England," I thought again. He accompanied me to 
my chamber door, or rather to the foot of the stairs. 
There he wished me pleasant dreams. " And remem- 



THE BARFLEUR FAMILY 49 

ber," he cautioned me with the emphasis of one who has 
forgotten something of great consequence, " this is most 
important. Whatever you do, don't forget to put out 
your boots for the maid to take and have blacked. 
Otherwise you will disrupt the whole social procedure 
of England," 

It is curious — this feeling of being quite alone for the 
first time in a strange land. I began to unpack my bags, 
solemnly thinking of New York. Presently I went to 
the window and looked out. One or two small lights 
burned afar ofif. I undressed and got into bed, feeling 
anything but sleepy. I lay and watched the fire flicker- 
ing on the hearth. So this was really England, and here 
I was at last — a fact absolutely of no significance to 
any one else in the world, but very important to me. An 
old, old dream come true! And it had passed so oddly 
— the trip — so almost unconsciously, as it were. We 
make a great fuss, I thought, about the past and the 
future, but the actual moment is so often without mean- 
ing. Finally, after hearing a rooster crow and thinking 
of Hamlet's father — his ghost — and the chill that in- 
vests the thought of cock-crow in that tragedy, I slept. 

Morning came and with it a knocking on the door. I 
called, " Come in." In came the maid, neat, cleanly, rosy- 
cheeked, bringing a large tin basin — very much wider 
than an American tub but not so deep — a large water 
can, full of hot water, towels and the like. She put the 
tub and water can down, drew a towel rack from the 
wall nearby, spread out the towels and left. 

I did not hear her take the boots, but when I went to 
the door they w^ere gone. In the afternoon they were 
back again, nice a;nd bright. I speculated on all this as 
an interesting demonstration of English life. Barfleur 
is not so amazingly well-to-do, but he has all these things. 



50 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

It struck me as pleasing, soothing, orderly — quite the 
same thing I had been seeing on the train and the ship. 
It was all a part of that interesting national system which 
I had been hearing so much about. 

At breakfast it was quite the same — a most orderly 
meal. Barfleur was there to breakfast with me and see 
that I was started right. His face was smiling. How 
did I like it? Was I comfortable? Had I slept well? 
Had I slept very w^ell? It was bad weather, but I would 
rather have to expect that at this season of the year. 

I can see his smiling face — a little cynical and dis- 
illusioned — get some faint revival of his own native in- 
terest in England in my surprise, curiosity and interest. 
The room was cold, but he did not seem to think so. No, 
no, no, it was very comfortable. I was simply not ac- 
climated yet. I would get used to it. 

This house was charming, I thought, and here at 
breakfast I was introduced to the children. Berenice 
Mary Barfleur, the only girl and the eldest child, looked 
to me at first a little pale and thin — quite peaked, 
in fact — but afterwards I found her not to be so — 
merely a temperamental objection on my part to a type 
which afterwards seemed to me very attractive. She 
was a decidedly wise, high-spoken, intellectual and cynical 
little maid. Although only eleven years of age she con- 
versed with the air, the manner and the words of a 
woman of twenty. 

" Oh, yes. Amayreeka ! Is that a nice place ? Do 
you like it? " 

I cannot in the least way convey the touch of lofty, 
well-bred feeling it had — quite the air and sound of a 
woman of twenty-five or thirty schooled in all the niceties 
of polite speech. " What a child," I thought. " She 
talks as though she were affected, but I can see that she 
is not." Quite different she seemed from what any 



THE BARFLEUR FAMILY 51 

American child could be — less vigorous, more intellec- 
tual, more spiritual ; perhaps not so forceful but probably 
infinitely more subtle. She looked delicate, remote, 
Burne-Jonesy — far removed from the more common- 
place school of force we know — and I think I like our 
type better. I smiled at her and she seemed friendly 
enough, but there was none of that running forward and 
greeting people which is an average middle-class Ameri- 
can habit. She was too well bred. I learned afterward, 
from a remark dropped at table by her concerning 
American children, that it was considered bad form. 
" American children are the kind that run around hotel 
foyers with big bows on their hair and speak to people," 
was the substance of it. I saw at once how bad American 
children were. 

Well, then came the eldest boy, Percy Franklin Bar- 
fleur, who reminded me, at first glance, of that American 
caricature type — dear to the newspaper cartoonist — of 
Little Johnnie Bostonbeans. Here he was — " glawses," 
inquiring eyes, a bulging forehead, a learned air ; and all 
at ten years, and somewhat undersized for his age — a 
clever child ; sincere, apparently ; rather earnest ; eager to 
know, full of the light of youthful understanding. Like 
his sister, his manners were quite perfect but unstudied. 
He smiled and replied, *' Quite well, thank you," to my 
amused inquiries after him. I could see he was bright 
and thoughtful, but the unconscious (though, to me, af- 
fected) quality of the English voice amused me here 
again. Then came Charles Gerard Barfleur, and James 
Herbert Barfleur, who impressed me in quite the same 
way as the others. They were nice, orderly children but 
English, oh, so English ! 

It was while walking in the garden after breakfast that 
I encountered James Herbert Barfleur, the youngest ; but, 
in the confusion of meeting people generally, I did not 



52 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

recognize him. He was outside the coach house, where 
are the rooms of the gardener, and where my room is. 

"And which httle Barfleur might this be?" I asked 
genially, in that patronizing way we have with children. 

" James Herbert Barfleur," he replied, with a gravity 
of pronunciation which quite took my breath away. We 
are not used to this formal dignity of approach in chil- 
dren of so very few years in America. This lad was 
only five years of age and he was talking to me in the 
educated voice of one of fifteen or sixteen. I stared, of 

course. 

" You don't tell me," I replied. " And what is your 

sister's name, again?" 

" Berenice ]\Iary Barfleur," he repHed. 

" Dear, dear, dear," I sighed. " Now what do you 
know about that? " 

Of course such a wild piece of American slang as that 
had no significance to him whatsoever. It fell on his 
ears without meaning. 

" I don't know," he replied, interested in some fixture 
he was fastening to a toy bath tub. 

" Is n't that a fine little bath tub you have," I ventured, 
eager to continue the conversation because of its novelty. 

" It 's a nice little bawth," he went on, " but I would n't 
call it a tub." 

I really did not know how to reply to this last, it took 
me so by surprise; — a child of five, in little breeches 
scarcely larger than my tw^o hands, making this fine dis- 
tinction. " We surely live and learn," I thought, and 
went on my way smiling. 

This house interested me from so many other points of 
view, being particularly English and new, that I was 
never weary of investigating it. I had a conversation 
with the gardener one morning concerning his duties 
and found that he had an exact schedule of procedure 



THE BARFLEUR FAMILY 53 

which covered every day in the year. First, I believe, he 
got hold of the boots, delivered to him by the maid, and 
did those ; and then he brought up his coal and wood and 
built the fires; and then he had some steps and paths to 
look after; and then some errands to do, I forget what. 
There was the riding pony to curry and saddle, the stable 
to clean — oh, quite a long list of things which he did 
over and over, day after day. He talked with such an 
air of responsibility, as so many English servants do, 
that I was led to reflect upon the reliability of Eng- 
lish servants in general ; and he dropped his h's where 
they occurred, of course, and added them where they 
should n't have been. He told me how much he received, 
how much he had received, how he managed to live on it, 
how shiftless and irresponsible some people were. 

" They don't know 'ow to get along, sir," he informed 
me with the same solemn air of responsibility. " They 
just doesn't know 'ow to manige, sir, I tyke it; some 
people does n't, sir. They gets sixteen or highteen 
shilHn's, the same as me, sir, but hawfter they goes and 
buys five or six g'uns (I thought he said guns — he ac- 
tually said gallons) o' beer in the week, there hain't much 
left fer other things, is there, sir? Now that's no wy, 
sir, is it, sir? I hawsk you." 

I had to smile at the rural accent. He was so simple 
minded — so innocent, apparently. Every one called 
him Wilkins — not Mr. Wilkins (as his colleagues 
might in America) or John or Jack or some sobriquet, 
but just Wilkins. He was Wilkins to every one — the 
master, the maid, the children. The maid was Dora to 
every one, and the nurse. Nana. It was all interesting to 
me because it was so utterly new. 

And then this landscape round about; the feel of the 
country was refreshing. I knew absolutely nothing 
about it, and yet I could see and feel that we were in a 



54 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

region of comfortable suburban life. I could hear the 
popping of guns all clay long, here — and thereabouts — 
this being the open season for shooting, not hunting, as 
my host informed me; there was no such thing as hunt- 
ing hereabouts. I could see men strolling here and there 
together, guns under their arms, plaid caps on their heads, 
in knee breeches, and leather leggings. I could see, from 
my writing desk in the drawing-room window, clever- 
riding English girls bounding by on light-moving horses, 
and in my limited walks I saw plenty of comfortable- 
looking country places ■ — suburban homes. I was told 
by a friend of mine that this was rather a pleasant 
country section, but that I might see considerable of the 
same thing anywhere about London at this distance. 

" Dora " the maid interested me very much. She was 
so c[uiet, so silent and so pretty. The door would open, 
any time during the day when I was writing, and in she 
would come to look after the fire, to open or close the 
windows, to draw the curtains, light the candles and serve 
the tea, or to call me to luncheon or dinner. Usually I ate 
my luncheon and drank my four-o'clock tea alone, I ate 
my evening meal all alone once. It made no differ- 
ence — my eating alone. The service was quite the 
same ; the same candles were lighted — several brackets 
on different parts of the table; the fire built in the dining- 
room. There were four or five courses and wine. Dora 
stood behind me watching me eat in silence, and I confess 
I felt very queer. It was all so solemn, so stately. I 
felt like some old gray baron or bachelor shut away from 
the world and given to contemplating the follies of his 
youth. When through with nuts and wine — the final 
glass of port — it was the custom of the house to retire 
to the drawing-room and drink the small cup of black 
coffee which was served there. And on this night, al- 
though I was quite alone, it was the same. The coffee 



THE BARFLEUR FAMILY 55 

was served just as promptly and dignifiedly as though 
there were eight or ten present. It interested me greatly, 
all of it, and pleased me more than I can say. 

Personally I shall always be glad that I saw some rural 
aspects of England first, for they are the most character- 
ful and, to me, significant. London is an amazing city 
and thoroughly English, but the rural districts are more 
suggestive. In what respects do the people of one 
country differ from those of another, since they eat, 
sleep, rise, dress, go to work, return, love, hate, and 
aspire alike ? In little — dynamically, mechanically 
speaking. But temperamentally, emotionally, spiritually 
and even materially they differ in almost every way. 
England is a mood, I take it, a combination of dull 
colors and atmosphere. It expresses heaven only knows 
what feeling for order, stability, uniformity, homeiness, 
simplicity. It is highly individual — more so almost 
than Italy, France or Germany. It is vital — and yet 
vital in an intellectual way only. You would say off- 
hand, sensing the feel of the air, that England is all mind 
with convictions, prejudices, notions, poetic longings 
terribly emphasized. The most egotistic nation in the 
world because, perhaps, the most forcefully intellectual. 

How different is the very atmosphere of it from 
America. The great open common about this house 
smacked of English individuality, leisure, order, stratifi- 
cation — anything you will. The atmosphere was mistily 
damp, the sun at best a golden haze. All the bare trees 
were covered with a thin coating of almost spring-green 
moss. The ground was springy, dewy. Rooks were in 
the sky, the trees. Little red houses in the valleys, with 
combination flues done in quaint individual chimney pots 
send upward soft spirals of blue smoke. Laborers, their 
earth-colored trousers strapped just below the knees by a 
small leather strap, appeared ever and anon ; housemaids, 



56 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

spick and span, with black dresses, white aprons, white 
laces in their hair, becoming streamers of linen made into 
large trig bows at their backs, appeared at some door or 
some window of almost every home. The sun glints into 
such orderly, well-dressed windows; the fields suspire 
such dewy fragrances. You can encounter hills of sheep, 
creaking wains, open common land of gorse and wild 
berries. ]\Iy little master, smartly clad, dashes by on a 
pony ; my young mistress looks becomingly gay and 
superior on a Shetland or a cob. A four-year-old has a 
long-eared white donkey to ride. That is England. 

How shall it be said — how described ? It is so deli- 
cate, so remote, so refined, so smooth, a pleasant land of 
great verse and great thought. 



CHAPTER VII 

A GLIMPSE OF LONDON 

AFTER a few days I M^ent to London for the first 
time — I do not count the night of my arrival, 
for I saw nothing but the railway terminus — • 
and, I confess, I was not impressed as much as 
I might have been. I could not help thinking on 
this first morning, as we passed from Paddington, 
via Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Park Lane, Brook 
Street, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly 
and other streets to Regent Street and the neighborhood 
of the Carlton Hotel, that it was beautiful, spacious, 
cleanly, dignified and well ordered, but not astonishingly 
imposing. Fortunately it was a bright and comfortable 
morning and the air was soft. There was a faint bluish 
haze over the city, which I took to be smoke; and cer- 
tainly it smelled as though it were smoky. I had a sense 
of great life but not of crowded life, if I manage to make 
myself clear by that. It seemed to me at first blush as 
if the city might be so vast that no part was important. 
At every turn Barfleur, who was my ever-present mon- 
itor, was explaining, " Now this that we are coming to," 
or " This that we are passing," or " This is so and so ; " 
and so we sped by interesting things, the city impressing 
me in a vague way but meaning very little at the moment. 
We must have passed through a long stretch of Piccadilly, 
for Barfleur pointed out a line of clubs, naming them — 
the St. James's Club, the Savile Club, the Lyceum Club, 
and then St. James's Palace. 

I was duly impressed. I was seeing things which, 

57 



S8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

after all, I thought, did not depend so much upon their 
exterior beauty or vast presence as upon the import 
of their lineage and connections. They were beautiful in 
a low, dark way, and certainly they were tinged with an 
atmosphere of age and respectability. After all, since 
life is a figment of the brain, built-up notions of 
things are really far more impressive in many cases than 
the things themselves. London is a fanfare of great 
names; it is a clatter of vast reputations; it is a swirl of 
memories and celebrated beauties and orders and distinc- 
tions. It is almost impossible any more to disassociate 
the real from the fictitious or, better, spiritual. There 
is something here which is not of brick and stone at all, 
but which is purely a matter of thought. It is disem- 
bodied poetry; noble ideas; delicious memories of great 
things; and these, after all, are better than brick and 
stone. The city is low — universally not more than five 
stories high, often not more than two, but it is beautiful. 
And it alternates great spaces with narrow crevices in 
such a way as to give a splendid variety. You can have 
at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very 
free. I can understand now Browning's desire to in- 
clude " poor old Camberwell " with Italy in the confines of 
romance. 

The thing that struck me most in so brief a survey 
— we were surely not more than twenty minutes in 
reaching our destination — was that the buildings were 
largely a golden yellow in color, quite as if they had 
been white and time had stained them. Many other 
buildings looked as though they had been black origi- 
nally and had been daubed white in spots. The truth 
is that it was quite the other way about. They had 
been snow white and had been sooted by the smoke 
until they were now nearly coal black. And only here 
and there had the wind and rain whipped bare white 



A GLIMPSE OF LONDON 59 

places which looked like scars or the drippings of lime. 
At first I thought, " How wretched." Later I thought, 
" This effect is charming." 

We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in 
America, particularly in our larger cities, that it is very 
hard at first to estimate a city of equal or greater rank, 
which is old and low and, to a certain extent, smoky. 
In places there was more beauty, more surety, more dig- 
nity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. 
The police had an air of dignity and intelligence such as 
I have never seen anywhere in America. The streets 
were beautifully swept and clean; and I saw soldiers here 
and there in fine uniforms, standing outside palaces and 
walking in the public ways. That alone was sufficient 
to differentiate London from any American city. We 
rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what 
I felt most of all was that I could not feel anything very 
definite about so great a city and that there was no use 
trying. 

We were soon at the bank where I was to have my 
American order for money cashed; and then, after a 
short walk in a narrow street, we were at the office of 
Barfleur, where I caught my first glimpse of an English 
business house. It was very different from an American 
house of the same kind, for it was in an old and dark 
building of not more than four stories — and set down 
m a narrow angle off the Strand and lighted by 
small lead-paned windows, which in America would 
smack strongly of Revolutionary days. In fact we have 
scarcely any such buildings left. Barfleur's private offices 
were on the second floor, up a small dingy staircase, and 
the room itself was so small that it surprised me by its 
coziness. I could not call it dingy. It was quaint 
rather, Georgian in its atmosphere, with a small open 
fire glowing in one corner, a great rolltop desk entirely 



6o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

out of keeping with the place in another, a table, a book- 
case, a number of photographs of celebrities framed, and 
the rest books. I think he apologized for, or explained 
the difference between, this and the average American 
business house, but I do not think explanations are in 
order. London is London. I should be sorry if it were 
exactly like New York, as it may yet become. The 
smallness and quaintness appealed to me as a fit at- 
mosphere for a healthy business. 

I should say here that this preliminary trip to London 
from Bridgely Level, so far as Barfieur was concerned, 
was intended to accomplish three things : first, to give me 
a preliminary glimpse of London; second, to see that I 
was measured and examined for certain articles of cloth- 
ing in which I was, according to Barfieur, woefully lack- 
ing ; and third, to see that I attended the concert of a cer- 
tain Austrian singer whose singing he thought I might 
enjoy. It was most important that I should go, because 
he had to go; and since all that I did or could do was 
merely grist for my mill, I was delighted to accompany 
him. 

Barfieur in many respects, I wish to repeat here, is one 
of the most delightful persons in the world. He is a 
sort of modern Beau Brummel with literary, artistic and 
gormandizing leanings. He loves order and refine- 
ment, of course, — things in their proper ways and places 
— as he loves life. I suspect him at times of being some- 
what of a martinet in home and office matters; but I am 
by no means sure that I am not doing him a grave injus- 
tice. A more even, complaisant, well-mannered and stoi- 
cal soul, who manages to get his way in some fashion or 
other, if it takes him years to do it, I never met. He 
surely has the patience of fate and, I think, the true 
charity of a great heart. Now before I could be prop- 
erly presented in London and elsewhere I needed a long 



A GLIMPSE OF LONDON 6i 

list of things. So this morning I had much shopping 
to attend to. 

Since the matter of English and American money had 
been troubling me from the moment I reached that stage 
on my voyage where I began to pay for things out of my 
own pocket to the ship's servants, I began complaining of 
my difficulties now. I could n't figure out the tips to my 
own satisfaction and this irritated me. I remember urg- 
ing Barfieur to make the whole matter clear to me, which 
he did later. He gave me a typewritten statement as to 
the relative value of the various pieces and what tips I 
should pay and how and when at hotels and country 
houses, and this I followed religiously. Here it is : 

In leaving the hotel to-morrow, give the 
following tips : 

Maid 3/- 

Valet 3/- 

Gold Braid i/- 

Porter (who looks after telephone) i/- 

Outside Man (Doorman) i/- 

If you reckon at a hotel to give gd. a day to the maid and the 
valet, with a minimum of i/-, you will be doing handsomely. 
On a visit, on the supposition that they have only maids, give 
the two maids whom you are likely to come across 2/6 each, 
when you come away on Monday. (I am speaking of week- 
ends.) Longer periods should be figured at pd. a day. If, on 
the other hand, it is a large establishment — butler and foot- 
man — you would have to give the butler 10/- and the footman 
5/- for a week-end; for longer periods more. 

I cannot imagine anything more interesting than being 
introduced as I was by Barfleur to the social character of 
London. He was so intelligent and so very nice about 
it all. " Now, first," he said, " we will get your glasses 
mended; and then you want a traveling bag; and then 
some ties and socks, and so on. I have an appointment 



62 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

with you at your tailor's at eleven o'clock, where you are 
to be measured for your waistcoats, and at eleven-thirty 
at your furrier's, where you are to be measured for your 
fur coat," and so on and so forth. " Well, come along. 
We'll be off." 

I have to smile when I think of it, for I, of all people, 
am the least given to this matter of proper dressing 
and self -presentation, and Barfleur, within reasonable 
limits, represents the other extreme. To him, as I have 
said, these things are exceedingly important. The deli- 
cate manner in which he indicated and urged me into 
getting the things which would be all right, without 
openly insisting on them, was most pleasing. " In Eng- 
land, you know," he would hint, " it is n't quite good 
form to wear a heavy striped tie with a frock coat — 
never a straight black; and we never tie them in that 
fashion — always a simple knot." My socks had to be 
striped for morning wear and my collars winged, else 
I was in very bad form indeed. I fell into the habit 
of asking, "What now?" 

London streets and shops as I first saw them interested 
me greatly. I saw at once more uniforms than one 
would ordinarily see in New York, and more high hats 
and, presumably, — I could not tell for the overcoats — 
cutaway coats. The uniforms were of mail-men, por- 
ters, messenger-boys and soldiers; and all being dif- 
ferent from what I had been accustomed to, they 
interested me — the mail-men particularly, with a serv- 
ice helmet cut square off at the top; and the little mes- 
senger boys, with their tambourine caps cocked joyously 
over one ear, amused me; the policeman's helmet strap 
under his chin was new and diverting. 

In the stores the clerks first attracted my atten- 
tion, but I may say the stores and shops them- 
selves, after New York, seemed small and old. New 



A GLIMPSE OF LONDON 63 

York is so new; the space given to the more important 
shops is so considerable. In London it struck me that 
the space was not much and that the woodwork and walls 
were dingy. One can tell by the feel of a place whether 
it is exceptional and profitable, and all of these were that; 
but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an air 
of civility, I had almost said servility, which was dif- 
ferent. They looked to me like individuals born to a 
condition and a point of view; and I think they are. 
In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he 
chooses (ability guaranteed), but I'm not so sure that 
this is true in England. Anyhow, the American clerk 
always looks his possibilities — his problematic future ; 
the English clerk looks as if he were to be one indefi- 
nitely. 

We were through with this round by one o'clock, and 
Barfleur explained that we would go to a certain very 
well-known hotel grill. 

The hotel, after its fashion — the grill — was a distinct 
blow. I had fancied that I was going to see something 
on the order of the luxurious new hotel in New York — 
certainly as resplendent, let us say, as our hotels of the 
lower first class. Not so. It could be compared, and I 
think fairly so, only to our hotels of the second or third 
class. There was the same air of age here that there was 
about our old but very excellent hotels in New York. 
The woodwork was plain, the decorations simple. 

As for the crowd, well, Barfleur stated that it might be 
smart and it might not. Certain publishers, rich Jewish 
merchants, a few actors and some Americans would 
probably be here. This grill was affected by the for- 
eign element. The maitre d'hotel was French, of course 
— a short, fat, black-whiskered man who amused me 
by his urbanity. The waiters were, I believe, German, 
as they are largely in London and elsewhere in England. 



64 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

One might almost imagine Germany intended invading 
England via its waiters. The china and plate were sim- 
ple and inexpensive, almost poor. A great hotel can 
afford to be simple. We had what we would have had 
at any good French restaurant, and the crowd was rather 
commonplace-looking to me. Several American girls 
came in and they were good-looking, smart but silly. I 
cannot say that I was impressed at all, and my subsequent 
experiences confirm that feeling. I am inclined to think 
that London has n't one hotel of the material splendor 
of the great new hotels in New York. But let that go for 
the present. 

\\'hile we were sipping coffee Barfleur told me of a 
Mrs. W., a friend of his whom I was to meet. She was, 
he said, a lion-hunter. She tried to make her somewhat 
interesting personality felt in so large a sea as London 
by taking up with promising talent before it was already 
a commonplace. I believe it was arranged over the 
'phone then that I should lunch there — at Mrs. W.'s — 
the following day at one and be introduced to a certain 
Lady R., who was known as a patron of the arts, and a 
certain Miss H., an interesting English type. I was 
pleased with the idea of going. I had never seen an 
English lady lion-hunter. I had never met English ladies 
of the types of Lady R. and Miss H. There might be 
others present. I was also informed that Mrs. W. was 
really not English but Danish; but she and her husband, 
who was also Danish and a wealthy broker, had resided 
in London so long that they were to all intents and pur- 
poses English, and in addition to being rich they were in 
rather interesting standing socially. 

After luncheon we went to hear a certain Miss T., 
an Austrian of about thirty years of age, sing at some 
important hall in London — Bechstein Hall, I believe it 
was, — and on the way I was told something of her. It 



A GLIMPSE OF LONDON 65 

seemed that she was very promising — a great success 
in Germany and elsewhere as a concert-singer — and 
that she might be coming to America at some time or 
other. Barfleur had known her in Paris. He seemed 
to think I would like her. We went and I heard a very 
lovely set of songs — oh, quite delightful, rendered in a 
warm, sympathetic, enthusiastic manner and representing 
the most characteristic type of German love sentiment. 
It is a peculiar sentiment — tender, wistful, smacking of 
the sun at evening and lovely water on which the moon 
is shining. German sentiment verges on the mushy — ■ 
is always close to tears — but anything more expressive 
of a certain phase of life I do not know. 

Miss T. sang forcefully, joyously, vigorously, and I 
wished sincerely to meet her and tell her so ; but that was 
not to be, then. 

As we made our way to Paddington Barfleur, brisk and 
smiling, asked : 

" Were you amused? " 

" Quite." 

" Well, then this afternoon was not wasted. I shall 
always be satisfied if you are amused." 

I smiled, and we rode sleepily back to Bridgely Level 
to dine and thence to bed. 



CHAPTER VIII 

A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM 

I RECALL the next day, Sunday, with as much inter- 
est as any date, for on that day at one-thirty I en- 
countered my first London drawing-room. I recall 
now as a part of this fortunate adventure that we had 
been talking of a new development in French art, which 
Barfieur approved in part and disapproved in part — the 
Post-Impressionists; and there was mention also of the 
Cubists — a still more radical departure from conven- 
tional forms, in which, if my impressions are correct, the 
artist passes from any attempt at transcribing the visible 
scene and becomes wholly geometric, metaphysical and 
symbolic. 

When I reached the house of Mrs. W., which was in 
one of those lovely squares that constitute such a striking 
feature of the West End, I was ushered upstairs to the 
drawing-room, where I found my host, a rather prac- 
tical, shrewd-looking Dane, and his less obviously Danish 
wife. 

" Oh, Mr. Dermer," exclaimed my hostess on sight, 
as she came forward to greet me, a decidedly engaging 
woman of something over forty, with bronze hair and 
ruddy complexion. Her gown of green silk, cut after 
the latest mode, stamped her in my mind as of a ro- 
mantic, artistic, eager disposition. 

" You must come and tell us at once what you think 
of the picture we are discussing. It is downstairs. 
Lady R. is there and Miss H. We are trying to see if 
we can get a better light on it. Mr. Barfleur has told me 

66 



A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM 67 

of you. You are from America. You must tell us how 
you like London, after you see the Degas." 

I think I liked this lady thoroughly at a glance and 
felt at home with her, for I know the type. It is the 
mobile, artistic type, with not much practical judgment 
in great matters, but bubbling with enthusiasm, tempera- 
ment, life. 

" Certainly — delighted. I know too little of London 
to talk of it. I shall be interested in your picture." 

We had reached the main floor by this time. 

" Mr. Dernier, the Lady R." 

A modern suggestion of the fair Jahane, tall, astonish- 
ingly lissom, done — as to clothes — after the best man- 
ner of the romanticists — such was the Lady R. A more 
fascinating type — from the point of view of stagecraft 
■ — I never saw. And the languor and lofty elevation 
of her gestures and eyebrows defy description. She 
could say, " Oh, I am so weary of all this," with a slight 
elevation of her eyebrows a hundred times more defi- 
nitely and forcefully than if it had been shouted in sten- 
torian tones through a megaphone. 

She gave me the fingers of an archly poised hand. 

" It is a pleasure! " 

" And Miss H., Mr. Dernrer." 

" I am very pleased ! " 

A pink, slim lily of a woman, say twenty-eight or 
thirty, very fragile-seeming, very Dresden-china-like 
as to color, a dream of light and Tyrian blue with some 
white interwoven, very keen as to eye, the perfection of 
hauteur as to manner, so well-bred that her voice seemed 
subtly suggestive of it all — that was Miss H. 

To say that I was interested in this company is putting 
it mildly. The three women were so distinct, so indi- 
vidual, so characteristic, each in a different way. The 
Lady R. was all peace and repose — statuesque, weary, 



68 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

dark. Miss H. was like a ray of sunshine, pure morn- 
ing light, delicate, gay, mobile. Mrs. W. was of thicker 
texture, redder blood, more human fire. She had a 
vigor past the comprehension of either, if not their sub- 
tlety of intellect — which latter is often so much better. 

Mr. W. stood in the background, a short, stocky gen- 
tleman, a little bored by the trivialities of the social 
world. 

" Ah, yes. Daygah ! You like Daygah, no doubt," 
interpolated Mrs. W., recalling us. "A lovely pigture, 
don't you think? Such color! such depth! such sym- 
pathy of treatment! Oh!" 

Mrs. W.'s hands were up in a pretty artistic gesture 
of delight. 

" Oh, yes," continued the Lady R., taking up the rap- 
ture. " It is saw human — saw perfect in its harmony. 
The hair — it is divine ! And the poor man ! he lives 
alone now, in Paris, quite dreary, not seeing any one. 
Aw, the tragedy of it! The tragedy of it!" A deli- 
cately carved vanity-box she carried, of some odd work- 
manship — blue and white enamel, with points of coral 
in it — was lifted in one hand as expressing her great 
distress. I confess I was not much moved and I looked 
quickly at Miss H. Her eyes, it seemed to me, held a 
subtle, apprehending twinkle. 

" And you! " It was Mrs. W. addressing me. 

" It is impressive, I think. I do not know as much 
of his work as I might, I am sorry to say." 

" Ah, he is marvelous, wonderful! I am transported 
by the beauty and the depth of it all! " It was Mrs. W. 
talking and I could not help rejoicing in the quality of 
her accent. Nothing is so pleasing to me in a woman of 
culture and refinement as that additional tang of remote- 
ness which a foreign accent lends. If only all the lovely, 
cultured women of the world could speak with a foreign 



A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM 69 

accent in their native tongue I would like it better. It 
lends a touch of piquancy not otherwise obtainable. 

Our luncheon party was complete now and we would 
probably have gone immediately into the dining-room 
except for another picture — by Piccasso. Let me re- 
peat here that before Barfleur called my attention to 
Piccasso's cubical uncertainty in the London Exhibition, I 
had never heard of him. Here in a dark corner of the 
room was the nude torso of a consumptive girl, her ribs 
showing, her cheeks colorless and sunken, her nose a 
wasted point, her eyes as hungry and sharp and lustrous 
as those of a bird. Her hair was really no hair — 
strings. And her thin bony arms and shoulders were 
pathetic, decidedly morbid in their quality. To add to the 
morgue-like aspect of the composition, the picture was 
painted in a pale bluish-green key. 

I wish to state here that now, after some little lapse 
of time, this conception — the thought and execution of 
it — is growing upon me. I am not sure that this work 
which has rather haunted me is not much more than a 
protest — the expression and realization of a great tem- 
perament. But at the moment it struck me as dreary, 
gruesome, decadent, and I said as much when asked for 
my impression. 

" Gloomy ! Morbid ! " Mrs. W. fired in her quite 
lovely accent. " What has that to do with art ? " 

"Luncheon is served, Madam!" 

The double doors of the dining-room were flung open. 

I found myself sitting between Mrs. W. and Miss H. 

" I was so glad to hear you say you did n't like it," 
Miss H. applauded, her eyes sparkling, her lip moving 
with a delicate little smile. " You know, I abhor those 
things. They are decadent like the rest of France and 
England. We are going backward instead of forward — • 
I am quite sure. We have not the force we once had. 



70 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

It is all a race after pleasure and living and an interest 
in subjects of that kind. I am quite sure it is n't healthy, 
normal art. I am sure life is better and brighter than 
that." 

" I am inclined to think so, at times, myself," I replied. 

We talked further and I learned to my surprise that 
she suspected England to be decadent as a whole, falling 
behind in brain, brawn and spirit and that she thought 
America was much better. 

" Do you know," she observed, " I really think it would 
be a very good thing for us if we were conquered by 
Germany." 

I had found here, I fancied, some one who was really 
thinking for herself and a very charming young lady in 
the bargain. She was quick, apprehensive, all for a 
heartier point of view. I am not sure now that she was 
not merely being nice to me, and that anyhow she is 
not all wrong, and that the heartier point of view is the 
courage which can front life unashamed; which sees the 
divinity of fact and of beauty in the utmost seeming 
tragedy, Piccasso's grim presentation of decay and 
degradation is beginning to teach me something — the 
marvelous perfection of the spirit which is concerned 
with neither perfection, nor decay, but life. It haunts 
me. 

The charming luncheon was quickly over and I think 
I gathered a very clear impression of the status of my 
host and hostess from their surroundings. Mr. W. was 
evidently liberal in his understanding of what constitutes 
a satisfactory home. It was not exceptional in that it 
differed greatly from the prevailing standard of luxury. 
But assuredly it was all in sharp contrast to Piccasso's 
grim representation of life and Degas's revolutionary 
opposition to conventional standards. 

Another man now made his appearance — an artist. 



c 



n 3 
X n 
o n 



O fl 

■-t 




A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM 71 

I shall not forget him soon, for you do not often meet 
people who have the courage to appear at Sunday after- 
noons in a shabby workaday business suit, unpolished 
shoes, a green neckerchief in lieu of collar and tie, and 
cuffless sleeves. I admired the quality, the workman- 
ship of the silver-set scarab which held his green linen 
neckerchief together, but I was a little puzzled as to 
whether he was very poor and his presence insisted upon, 
or comfortably progressive and indifferent to conven- 
tional dress. His face and body were quite thin; his 
hands delicate. He had an apprehensive eye that rarely 
met one's direct gaze. 

" Do you think art really needs that? " Miss H. asked 
me. She was alluding to the green linen handkerchief. 

" I admire the courage. It is at least individual." 

" It is after George Bernard Shaw. It has been done 
before," repHed Miss H. 

" Then it requires almost more courage," I replied. 

Here Mrs. W. moved the sad excerpt from the morgue 
to the center of the room that he of the green necker- 
chief might gaze at it. 

" I like it," he pronounced. " The note is somber, but 
it is excellent work." 

Then he took his departure with interesting abrupt- 
ness. Soon the Lady R. was extending her hand in an 
almost pathetic farewell. Her voice was lofty, sad, sus- 
tained. I wish I could describe it. There was just a 
suggestion of Lady Macbeth in the sleep-walking scene. 
As she made her slow, graceful exit I wanted to applaud 
loudly. 

Mrs. W. turned to me as the nearest source of interest 
and I realized with horror that she was going to fling 
her Piccasso at my head again and with as much haste 
as was decent I, too, took my leave. 



CHAPTER IX 

CALLS 

IT was one evening shortly after I had lunched with 
Mrs. W. that Barfleur and I dined with Miss E., the 
young actress who had come over on the steamer 
with us. It was interesting to find her in her own rather 
smart London quarters surrounded by maid and cook, 
and with male figures of the usual ornamental sort in the 
immediate background. One of them was a ruddy, hand- 
some, slightly corpulent French count of manners the 
pink of perfection. He looked for all the world like the 
French counts introduced into American musical comedy, 
— just the right type of collar about his neck, the perfect 
shoe, the close-fitting, well-tailored suit, the mustachios 
and hair barbered to the last touch. He was charming, 
too, in his easy, gracious aloofness, saying only the few 
things that would be of momentary interest and pressing 
nothing. 

Miss E. had prepared an appetizing luncheon. She had 
managed to collect a group of interesting people — a Mr. 
T., for instance, whose hete noire was clergymen and who 
stood prepared by collected newspaper clippings and court 
proceedings, gathered over a period of years, to prove 
that all ecclesiastics were scoundrels. He had, as he 
insisted, amazing data, showing that the most per- 
verted of all English criminals were usually sons of 
bishops and that the higher you rose in the scale of hie- 
ratic authority the worse were the men in charge. The 
delightful part of it all was the man's profound serious- 
ness of manner, a thin, magnetic, albeit candle-waxy type 
of person of about sixty-five who had the force and en- 
thusiasm of a boy. 

72 



CALLS 73 

" Ah, yes," you would hear him exclcim often during 
lunch, " I know him well. A greater scoundrel never 
lived. His father is bishop of Wimbledon" — or, for 
variation — "his father was once rector of Christ 
Church, Mayfair." 

There was a thin, hard, literary lady present, of the 
obviously and militantly virgin type. She was at the 
foot of the table, next to the count, but we fell into a 
discussion of the English woman's-suffrage activity 
under his very nose, the while he talked lightly to Bar- 
fleur. She was for more freedom for women, politically 
and otherwise, in order that they might accomplish certain 
social reforms. You know the type. How like a sym- 
pathetic actress, I thought, to pick a lady of this charac- 
ter to associate with ! One always finds these opposing 
types together. 

The thing that interested me was to see this charming 
little actress keeping up as smart a social form as her 
means would permit and still hoping after years of 
effort and considerable success to be taken up and made 
much of. She could not have been made to believe 
that society, in its last reaches, is composed of dullness 
and heaviness of soul, which responds to no schools 
of the unconventional or the immoral and knows 
neither flights of fancy nor delicacy and tenderness of 
emotion. 

Individuals like Miss E. think, somehow, that if they 
achieve a certain artistic success they will be admitted 
everywhere. Dear aspiring little Miss E. ! She could 
hardly have been persuaded that there are walls that are 
never scaled by art. And morality, any more than im- 
morality or religion, has nothing to do with some other 
walls. Force is the thing. And the ultimate art force 
she did not possess. If she had, she would have been ad- 
mitted to a certain interchange in certain fields. Society 



74 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

is composed of slightly interchanging groups, some mem- 
bers of which enter all, most members of which never 
venture beyond their immediate individual circle. And 
only the most catholic minded and energetic would at- 
tempt or care to bother with the labor of keeping in touch 
with more than one single agreeable circle. 

Another evening I went with Barfleur to call on two 
professional critics, one working in the field of lit- 
erature, the other in art exclusively. I mention these 
two men and their labors because they were very 
interesting to me, representing as they did two fields of 
artistic livelihood in London and both making moderate 
incomes, not large, but sufficient to live on in a simple 
way. They were men of mettle, as I discovered, urgent, 
thinking types of mind, quarreling to a certain extent 
with life and fate, and doing their best to read this very 
curious riddle of existence. 

These two men lived in charming, though small quar- 
ters, not far from fashionable London, on the fringe of 
ultra-respectability, if not of it. Mr. F. was a conserva- 
tive man, thirty-two or thirty-three years of age, pale, 
slender, remote, artistic. Mr. Tyne was in character not 
unlike Mr. F., I should have said, though he was the 
older man — artistic, remote, ostensibly cultivated, living 
and doing all the refined things on principle more than 
anything else. 

It amuses me now when I think of it, for of course 
neither of these gentlemen cared for me in the least, 
beyond a mild curiosity as to what I was like, but they 
were exceedingly pleasant. How did I like London? 
What did I think of the English? How did London 
contrast with New York? What were some of the 
things I had seen? 

I stated as succinctly as I could, that I was puzzled in 
my mind as to what I did think, as I am generally by this 




Hoped for the day when the issue might 
be tried out physically 



CALLS 75 

phantasmagoria called life, while Mr. Tyne served an 
opening glass of port and I toasted my feet before a 
delicious grate-fire. Already, as I have indicated in a 
way, I had decided that England was deficient in the 
vitahty which America now possesses — certainly defi- 
cient in the raw creative imagination which is producing 
so many new things in America, but far superior in what, 
for want of a better phrase, I must call social organiza- 
tion as it relates to social and commercial interchange 
generally. Something has developed in the English 
social consciousness a sense of responsibility. I really 
think that the English climate has had a great deal to do 
with this. It is so uniformly damp and cold and raw that 
it has produced a sober-minded race. When subse- 
quently I encountered the climates of Paris, Rome and 
the Riviera I realized c[uite clearly how impossible it 
would be to produce the English temperament there. 
One can see the dark, moody, passionate temperament 
of the Italian evolving to perfection under their brilliant 
skies. The wine-like atmosphere of Paris speaks for 
itself. London is what it is, and the Englishmen like- 
wise, because of the climate in which they have been 
reared. 

I said something to this effect without calling forth 
much protest, but when I ventured that the English might 
possibly be falling behind in the world's race and that 
other nations — such as the Germans and the Americans 
• — might rapidly be displacing them, I evoked a storm of 
opposition. The sedate Mr. F. rose to this argument. It 
began at the dinner-table and was continued in the general 
living-room later. He scoffed at the suggestion that the 
Germans could possibly conquer or displace England, and 
hoped for the day when the issue might be tried out 
physically. Mr. Tyne good-humoredly spoke of the long 
way America had to go before it could achieve any social 



'je A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

importance even within itself. It was a thrashing whirl- 
pool of foreign elements. He had recently been to the 
United States, and in one of the British quarterlies then 
on the stands was a long estimate by him of America's 
weaknesses and potentialities. He poked fun at the 
careless, insulting manners of the people, their love of 
show, their love of praise. .No Englishman, having 
tasted the comforts of civilized life in England, could 
ever live happily in America. There was no such thing 
as a serving class. He objected to American business 
methods as he had encountered them, and I could see 
that he really disliked America. To a certain extent he 
disliked me for being an American, and resented my 
modest literary reputation for obtruding itself upon Eng- 
land. I enjoyed these two men as exceedingly able com- 
batants — men against whose wits I could sharpen my 
own. 

I mention them because, in a measure, they suggested 
the literary and artistic atmosphere of London. 



CHAPTER X 

SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON 

LONDON sings in my ears." I remember writing 
this somewhere about the fourth or fifth day of 
my stay. It was delicious, the sense of novelty 
and wonder it gave me. I am one of those who have 
been raised on Dickens and Thackeray and Lamb, but 
I must confess I found little to corroborate the world of 
vague impressions I had formed. Novels are a mere 
expression of temperament anyhow. 

New York and America are all so new, so lustful of 
change. Here, in these streets, when you walk out of a 
morning or an evening, you feel a pleasing stability. 
London is not going to change under your very eyes. 
You are not going to turn your back to find, on looking 
again, a whole sky line effaced. The city is restful, 
naive, in a way tender and sweet like an old song. Lon- 
don is more fatalistic and therefore less hopeful than 
New York. 

One of the first things that impressed me, as I have said, 
was the grayish tinge of smoke that was over everything 
— a faint haze — and the next that as a city, street for 
street and square for square, it was not so strident as New 
York or Chicago — not nearly so harsh. The traffic was 
less noisy, the people more thoughtful and considerate, 
the so-called rush, which characterizes New York, less 
foolish. There is something rowdyish and ill-mannered 
about the street life of American cities. This was not 
true here. It struck me as simple, sedate, thoughtful, 
and I could only conclude that it sprang from a less stir- 
ring atmosphere of opportunity. I fancy it is harder to 

11 



78 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

get along in London. People do not change from one 
thing to another so much. The world there is more fixed 
in a pathetic routine, and people are more conscious of 
their so-called " betters." In so far as I could judge on 
so short a notice, London seemed to me to represent a 
mood — a uniform, aware, conservative state of being, 
neither brilliant nor gay anywhere, though interesting al- 
ways. About Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Lei- 
cester Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand I suppose 
the average Londoner would insist that London is very 
gay; but I could not see it. Certainly it was not gay as 
similar sections in New York are gay. It is not in the 
Londoner himself to be so. He is solid, hard, phleg- 
matic, a little dreary, like a certain type of rain-bird or 
Northern loon, content to make the best of a rather 
dreary situation. I hope not, but I felt it to be true. 

I do not believe that it is given any writer to wholly 
suggest a city. The mind is like a voracious fish — it 
would like to eat up all the experiences and character- 
istics of a city or a nation, but this, fortunately, is not 
possible. My own mind was busy pounding at the gates 
of fact, but during all the while I was there I got but a 
little way. I remember being struck with the nature of 
St. James's Park which was near my hotel, the great 
column to the Duke of Marlborough, at the end of the 
street, the whirl of life in Trafalgar Square and Picca- 
dilly Circus which were both very near. The offices I vis- 
ited in various nearby streets interested me, and the storm 
of cabs which whirled by all the corners of the region of 
my hotel. It was described to me as the center of London ; 
and I am quite sure it was — for clubs, theaters, hotels, 
smart shops and the like w-ere all here. The heavy trading 
section was further east along the banks of the Thames, 
and between that and Regent Street, where my little hotel 
was located, lay the financial section, sprawling around St. 



SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON 79 

Paul's Cathedral and the Bank of England. One could 
go out of this great central world easily enough — but it 
was only, apparently, to get into minor centers such as 
that about Victoria Station, Kensington, Paddington, 
Liverpool Street, and the Elephant and Castle. 

I may be mistaken, but London did not seem either so 
hard or foreign to me as New York. I have lived in New 
York for years and years and yet I do not feel that it is 
My city. One always feels in New York, for some rea- 
son, as though he might be put out, or even thrown 
out. There is such a perpetual and heavy invasion of the 
stranger. Here in London I could not help feeling off- 
hand as though things were rather stable and that I was 
welcome in the world's great empire city on almost any 
basis on which I wished myself taken. That sense of 
civility and courtesy to which I have already so often re- 
ferred was everywhere noticeable in mail-men, police- 
men, clerks, servants. Alas, when I think of New York, 
how its rudeness, in contrast, shocks me ! At home I do 
not mind. With all the others I endure it. Here in 
London for the first time in almost any great city I really 
felt at home. 

But the distances! and the various plexi of streets! 
and the endless directions in which one could go ! Lord ! 
Lord! how they confounded me. It may seem odd to 
make separate comment on something so thoroughly in- 
volved with everything else in a trip of this kind as the 
streets of London; but nevertheless they contrasted so 
strangely with those of other cities I have seen that I am 
forced to comment on them. For one thing, they are 
seldom straight for any distance and they change their 
names as frequently and as unexpectedly as a thief. 
Bond Street speedily becomes Old Bond Street or New 
Bond Street, according to the direction in which you are 
going ; and I never could see why the Strand should turn 



8o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

into Fleet Street as it went along, and then into Ludgate 
Hill, and then into Cannon Street. Neither could I un- 
derstand why Whitechapel Road should change to Mile 
End Road, but that is neither here nor there. The thing 
that interested me about London was that it was endless 
and that* there were no high buildings — nothing over 
four or five stories as a rule — though now and then you 
actually find eight- and nine-story buildings — and that 
it was homey and simple and sad in some respects. I 
remember thinking how gloomy were some of the figures 
I saw trudging here and there in the smoke-grayed 
streets and the open park spaces. I never saw such 
sickly, shabby, run-down-at-the-heels, decayed figures in 
all my life — figures from which all sap and juice and the 
freshness of youth and even manhood had long since de- 
parted. Men and v^omen they were who seemed to 
emerge out of gutters and cellars where could be neither 
light nor freshness nor any sense of hope or care, 
but only eloquent misery. "Merciful heaven!" I said 
to myself more than once, " is this the figure of a man? " 
That is what life does to some of us. It drains us as 
dry as the sickled wheat stalks and leaves tis to blow in 
wintry winds. Or it poisons us and allows us to fester 
and decay within our own skins. 

But mostly I have separate, vivid pictures of Lon- 
don — individual things that I saw, idle, pointless things 
that I did, which cheer and amuse and please me even now 
whenever I think of them. Thus I recall venturing one 
noon into one of the Lyons restaurants just above Regent 
Street in Piccadilly and being struck with the size and 
importance of it even though it was intensely middle 
class. It was a great chamber, decorated after the fash- 
ion of a palace ball-room, with immense chandeliers of 
prismed glass hanging from the ceiling, and a balcony 
furnished in cream and gold where other tables were set, 



SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON 8i 

and where a large stringed orchestra played continuously 
during lunch and dinner. An enormous crowd of very 
commonplace people were there — clerks, minor officials, 
clergymen, small shop-keepers — and the bill of fare was 
composed of many homely dishes such as beef-and-kid- 
ney pie, suet pudding, and the like — combined wi^h others 
bearing high-sounding French names. I mention this 
Lyons restaurant because there were several cjuite like it, 
and because it catered to an element not reached in quite 
the same way in America. In spite of the lifted eyebrows 
with which Barfleur greeted my announcement that I 
had been there, the food was excellent; and the service, 
while a little slow for a place of popular patronage, was 
good. I recall being amused by the tall, thin, solemn 
English head-waiters in frock coats, leading the exceed- 
ingly bourgeois customers to their tables. The English 
curate with his shovel hat was here in evidence and the 
minor clerk. I found great pleasure in studying this 
world, listening to the music, and thinking of the vast 
ramifications of London which it represented; for every 
institution of this kind represents a perfect world of 
people. 

Another afternoon I went to the new Roman Catholic 
Cathedral in Westminster to hear a fourteenth-century 
chant which was given between two and three by a com- 
pany of monks who were attached to the church. In 
the foggy London atmosphere a church of this size 
takes on great gloom, and the sound of these voices 
rolling about in it was very impressive. Religion 
seems of so little avail these days, however, that I won- 
dered why money should be invested in any such struc- 
ture or liturgy. Or why able-bodied, evidently material- 
minded men should concern themselves with any such 
procedure. There were scarcely a half-dozen people 
present, if so many; and yet this vast edifice echoes every 



82 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

day at this hour with these voices — a company of twenty 
or thirty fat monks who seemingly might be engaged in 
something better. Of rehgion — the spirit as opposed 
to the form — one might w-ell guess that there was little. 
From the cathedral I took a taxi, and bustling down 
Victoria Street, past the Houses of Parliament and into 
the Strand, came eventually to St. Paul's. Although it 
was only four o'clock, this huge structure was growing 
dusky, and the tombs of Wellington and Marlborough 
W'ere already dim. The organist allowed me to sit in 
the choir stalls with the choristers — a company of boys 
W'ho entered, after a time, headed by deacons and sub- 
deacons and possibly a canon. A solitary circle of elec- 
tric bulbs flamed gloomily overhead. By the light of 
this we were able to make out the liturgy covering this 
service — the psalms and prayers which swept sonor- 
ously through the building. As in the Roman Catholic 
Cathedral, I was impressed with the darkness and space 
and also, though not so much for some reason (tempera- 
mental inclination perhaps), with the futility of the pro- 
cedure. There are some eight million people in London, 
but there were only twenty-five or thirty here, and I was 
told that this service was never much more popular. On 
occasions the church is full enough — full to overflowing 
— but not at this time of day. The best that I could say 
for it w^as that it had a lovely, artistic import which 
ought to be encouraged ; and no doubt it is so viewed 
by those in authority. As a spectacle seen from the 
Thames or other sections of the city, the dome of St. 
Paul's is impressive, and as an example of English archi- 
tecture it is dignified — though in my judgment not to 
be compared with either Canterbury or Salisbury. But 
the interesting company of noble dead, the fact that the 
public now looks upon it as a national mausoleum and 
that it is a monument to the genius of Christopher Wren, 



SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON 83 

makes it worth while. Compared with other cathedrals 
I saw, its chief charm was its individuality. In actual 
beauty it is greatly surpassed by the pure Gothic or By- 
zantine or Greek examples of other cities. 

One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the 
House of Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the 
banks of the Thames. For days I had been skirting 
about them, interested in other things. The clock-tower, 
with its great round clock-face, — twenty-three feet in 
diameter, some one told me, — had been staring me in the 
face over a stretch of park space and intervening build- 
ings on such evenings as Parliament was in session, and 
I frecjuently debated with myself whether I should trou- 
ble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow 
so weary of standard, completed things at times! How- 
ever, I did go. It came about through the Hon. T. P. 
O'Connor, M.P., an old admirer of " Sister Carrie," 
who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had 
just finished reading " Jennie Gerhardt " the night I met 
him, and I shall never forget the kindly glow of his face 
as, on meeting me in the dining-room of the House of 
Commons, he exclaimed : 

" Ah, the biographer of that poor girl ! And how 
charming she was, too! Ah me! Ah me!" 

I can hear the soft brogue in his voice yet, and see the 
gay romance of his Irish eye. Are not the Irish all in- 
born cavaliers, anyhow ? 

I had been out in various poor sections of the city 
all day, speculating on that shabby mass that have nothing, 
know nothing, dream nothing ; or do they ? It was most 
depressing, as dark fell, to return through long, humble 
streets alive with a home-hurrying mass of people — ■ 
clouds of people not knowing whence they came or why. 
And now I was to return and go to dine where the laws 
are made for all England. 



84 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

I was escorted by another friend, a Mr. M., since dead, 
who was, when I reached the hotel, quite disturbed lest we 
be late. I like the man who takes society and social 
forms seriously, though I would not be that man for all 
the world. M. was one such. He was, if you please, a 
stickler for law and order. The Houses of Parliament 
and the repute of the Hon. T. P. O'Connor meant much 
to him. I can see O'Connor's friendly, comprehensive 
eye understanding it all — understanding in his deep, 
literary way why it should be so. 

As I hurried through Westminster Hall, the great gen- 
eral entrance, once itself the ancient Parliament of Eng- 
land, the scene of the deposition of Edward H, of the 
condemnation of Charles I, of the trial of Warren Hast- 
ings, and the poling of the exhumed head of Cromwell, 
I was thinking, thinking, thinking. What is a place like 
this, anyhow, but a fanfare of names? H you know his- 
tory, the long, strange tangle of steps or actions by which 
life ambles crab-wise from nothing to nothing, you know 
that it is little more than this. The present places are the 
thing, the present forms, salaries, benefices, and that 
dream of the mind which makes it all into something. 
As I walked through into Central Hall, where we had to 
wait until Mr. O'Connor was found, I studied the high, 
groined arches, the Gothic walls, the graven figures of the 
general anteroom. It was all rich, gilded, dark, lovely. 
And about me was a room full of men all titillating with a 
sense of their own importance — commoners, lords pos- 
sibly, call-boys, ushers, and here and there persons cry- 
ing of "Division! Division!" while a bell somewhere 
clanged raucously. 

''There's a vote on," observed Mr. M. "Perhaps 
they won't find him right away. Never mind ; he '11 
come." 

He did come finally, with, after his 'first greetings, a 



SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON 85 

" Well, now we '11 ate, drink, and be merry," and then we 
went in. 

At table, being an old member of Parliament, he ex- 
plained many things swiftly and interestingly, how the 
buildings were arranged, the number of members, the 
procedure, and the like. He was, he told me, a member 
from Liverpool, which, by the way, returns some Irish 
members, which struck me as rather strange for an Eng- 
lish city. 

" Not at all, not at all. The English like the Irish — 
at times,*' he added softly. 

" I have just been out in your East End," I said, " try- 
ing to find out how tragic London is, and I think my 
mood has made me a little color-blind. It 's rather a 
dreary world, I should say, and I often wonder whether 
law-making ever helps these people." 

He smiled that genial, equivocal, sophisticated smile of 
the Irish that always bespeaks the bland acceptance of 
things as they are, and tries to make the best of a bad 
mess. 

" Yes, it 's bad," — and nothing could possibly suggest 
the aroma of a brogue that went with this, — " but it 's 
no worse than some of your American cities — Law- 
rence, Lowell, Fall River." (Trust the Irish to hand you 
an intellectual "You're another!") "Conditions in 
Pittsburgh are as bad as anywhere, I think ; but it 's true 
the East End is pretty bad. You want to remember that 
it 's typical London winter weather we 're having, and 
London smoke makes those gray buildings look rather for- 
lorn, it 's true. But there 's some comfort there, as there 
is everywhere. My old Irish father was one for think- 
ing that we all have our rewards here or hereafter. Per- 
haps theirs is to be hereafter." And he rolled his eyes 
humorously and sanctimoniously heavenward. 

An able man this, full, as I knew, from reading his 



86 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

weekly and his books, of a deep, kindly understanding of 
life, but one who, despite his knowledge of the tragedies 
of existence, refused to be cast down. 

He was going up the Nile shortly in a house-boat with 
a party of wealthy friends, and he told me that Lloyd 
George,, the champion of the poor, was just making off 
for a winter outing on the Riviera, but that I might, if I 
would come some morning, have breakfast with him. 
He was sure that the great commoner would be glad to 
see me. He wanted me to call at his rooms, his London 
official offices, as it were, at 5 Morpeth Mansions, and 
have a pleasant talk with him, which latterly I did. 

While he was in the midst of it, the call of " Divi- 
sion ! " sounded once more through the halls, and he ran 
to take his place with his fellow-parliamentarians on 
some question of presumably vital importance. I can 
see him bustling away in his long frock coat, his napkin 
in his hand, ready to be counted yea or nay, as the case 
might be. 

Afterwards when he had outlined for me a tour in 
Ireland which I must sometime take, he took us up into 
the members' gallery of the Commons in order to see 
how wonderful it was, and we sat as solemn as owls, 
contemplating the rather interesting scene below. I can- 
not say that I was seriously impressed. The Hall of 
Commons, I thought, was small and stuffy, not so large 
as the House of Representatives at Washington, by any 
means. 

In delicious Irish whispers he explained a little con- 
cerning the arrangement of the place. The seat of the 
speaker was at the north end of the chamber on a straight 
line with the sacred wool sack of the House of Lords in 
another part of the building, however important that may 
be. If I would look under the rather shadowy canopy 
at the north end of this extremely square chamber, I 



SOME MORE ABOUT LONDON 87 

would see him, " smothering under an immense white 
wig," he explained. In front of the canopy was a table, 
the speaker's table, with presumably the speaker's offi- 
cial mace lying upon it. To the right of the speaker 
were the recognized seats of the government party, the 
ministers occupying the front bench. And then he 
pointed out to me Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law 
(Unionist member and leader of the opposition), and 
Mr. Winston Churchill, all men creating a great stir at 
the time. They were whispering and smiling in genial 
concert, while opposite them, on the left hand of the 
speaker, where the opposition was gathered, some dron- 
ing M. P. from the North, I understood, a noble lord, 
was delivering one of those typically intellectual com- 
mentaries in which the British are fond of indulging. I 
could not see him from where I sat, but I could see him 
just the same. I knew that he was standing very straight, 
in the most suitable clothes for the occasion, his linen im- 
maculate, one hand poised gracefully, ready to empha- 
size some rather obscure point, while he stated in the best 
English why this and this must be done. Every now 
and then, at a suitable point in his argument, some 
friendly and equally intelligent member would give voice 
to a soothing "Hyah! hyah!" or "Rathah!" Of the 
four hundred and seventy-six provided seats, I fancy 
something like over four hundred were vacant, their oc- 
cupants being out in the dining-rooms, or off in those 
adjoining chambers where parliamentarians confer dur- 
ing hours that are not pressing, aind where they are 
sought at the call for a division. I do not presume, how- 
ever, that they were all in any so safe or sane places. I 
mock-reproachfully asked Mr. O'Connor why he was not 
in his seat, and he said in good Irish : 

" Me boy, there are thricks in every tlirade. I '11 be 
there whin me vote is wanted." 



88 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

We came away finally through long, fioreated passages 
and towering rooms, where I paused to admire the in- 
tricate woodwork, the splendid gilding, and the tier upon 
tier of carven kings and queens in their respective niches. 
There was for me a flavor of great romance over it all. 
I could not help thinking that, pointless as it all might be, 
such joys and glories as we have are thus compounded. 
Out of the dull blatherings of half-articulate members, 
the maunderings of dreamers and schemers, come such 
laws and such policies as best express the moods of the 
time — of the British or any other empire. I have no 
great faith In laws. To me, they are ill-fitting gar- 
ments at best, traps and mental catch-polls for the unwary 
only. But I thought as I came out into the swirling 
city again, " It is a strange world. These clock-towers 
and halls will sometime fall into decay. The dome of 
our own capital will be rent and broken, and through its 
ragged interstices will fall the pallor of the moon." But 
life does not depend upon parliaments or men. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE THAMES 

AS pleasing hours as any that I spent in London 
were connected with the Thames — a murky- 
little stream above London Bridge, compared 
with such vast bodies as the Hudson and the Mississippi, 
but utterly delightful. I saw it on several occasions, — 
once in a driving rain off London Bridge, where twenty 
thousand vehicles were passing in the hour, it was said; 
once afterward at night when the boats below were faint, 
wind-driven lights and the crowd on the bridge black 
shadows. I followed it in the rain from Black friars 
Bridge, to the giant plant of the General Electric Com- 
pany at Chelsea one afternoon, and thought of Sir 
Thomas More, and Henry VHI, who married Anne 
Boleyn at the Old Church near Battersea Bridge, and 
wondered what they would think of this modern power- 
house. What a change from Henry VHI and Sir 
Thomas More to vast, whirling electric dynamos and a 
London subway system ! 

Another afternoon, bleak and rainy, I reconnoitered 
the section lying between Black friars Bridge and Tower 
Bridge and found it very interesting from a human, 
to say nothing of a river, point of view; I question 
whether in some ways it is not the most interest- 
ing region in London, though it gives only occa- 
sional glimpses of the river. London is curious. It 
is very modern in spots. It is too much like New 
York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston; but 
here between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower, along 
Upper and Lower Thames Street, I found some- 



90 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

thing that delighted me. It smacked of Dickens, of 
Charles II, of Old England, and of a great many for- 
gotten, far-off things which I felt, but could not readily 
call to mind. It was delicious, this narrow, winding 
street, with high walls, — high because the street was 
so narrow, — and alive with people bobbing along under 
umbrellas or walking stodgily in the rain. Lights were 
burning in all the stores and warehouses, dark recesses 
running back to the restless tide of the Thames, and they 
were full of an industrious commercial life. 

It was interesting to me to think that I was in the 
center of so much that was old, but for the exact details 
I confess I cared little. Here the Thames was especially 
delightful. It presented such odd vistas. I watched the 
tumbling tide of w^ater, whipped by gusty wind where 
moderate-sized tugs and tows were going by in the mist 
and rain. It was delicious, artistic, far more significant 
than quiescence and sunlight could have made it. I took 
note of the houses, the doorways, the quaint, wind- 
ing passages, but for the color and charm they did not 
compare with the nebulous, indescribable mass of work- 
ing boys and girls and men and women which moved 
before my gaze. The mouths of many of them were 
W'Cak, their noses snub, their eyes squint, their chins un- 
dershot, their ears stub, their chests flat. Most of them 
had a waxy, meaty look, but for interest they were in- 
comparable. American working crowds may be much 
more chipper, but not more interesting. I could not 
weary of looking at them. 

Lastly I followed the river once more all the way 
from Cleopatra's Needle to Chelsea one heavily down- 
pouring afternoon and found its mood varying splendidly 
though never once was it anything more than black-gray, 
changing at times from a pale or almost sunlit yellow 
to a solid leaden-black hue. It looked at times as though 



THE THAMES 91 

something remarkable were about to happen, so weirdly 
greenish-yellow was the sky above the water; and the 
tall chimneys of Lambeth over the way, appearing and 
disappearing in the mist, were irresistible. There is a 
certain kind of barge which plies up and down the 
Thames with a collapsible mast and sail which looks for 
all the world like something off the Nile. These boats 
harmonize with the smoke and the gray, lowery skies. 
I was never weary of looking at them in the changing 
light and mist and rain. Gulls skimmed over the water 
here very freely all the way from Blackfriars to Bat- 
tersea, and along the Embankment they sat in scores, 
solemnly cogitating the state of the weather, perhaps. 
I was delighted with the picture they made in places, 
greedy, wide-winged, artistic things. 

Finally I had a novel experience with these same gulls 
one Sunday afternoon. I had been out all morning recon- 
noitering strange sections of London, and arrived near 
Blackfriars Bridge about one o'clock. I was attracted 
by what seemed to me at first glance thousands of gulls, 
lovely clouds of them, swirling about the heads of several 
different men at various points along the wall. It was 
too beautiful to miss. It reminded me of the gulls about 
the steamer at Fishguard. I drew near. The first man 
I saw was feeding them minnows out of a small box 
he had purchased for a penny, throwing the tiny fish 
aloft in the air and letting the gulls dive for them. They 
ate from his hand, circled above and about his head, 
walked on the wall before him, their jade bills and sal- 
mon-pink feet showing delightfully. 

I was delighted, and hurried to the second. It was the 
same. I found the vender of small minnows near by, a 
man who sold them for this purpose, and purchased a 
few boxes. Instantly I became the center of another 
swirling cloud, wheeling and squeaking in hungry an- 



92 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ticipation. It was a great sight. Finally I threw out 
the last minnows, tossing them all high in the air, and 
seeing not one escape, while I meditated on the speed of 
these birds, which, while scarcely moving a wing, rise 
and fall with incredible swiftness. It is a matter of 
gliding up and down with them. I left, my head full 
of birds, the Thames forever fixed in mind. 

I w^ent one morning in search of the Tower, and 
coming into the neighborhood of Eastcheap wit- 
nessed that peculiar scene which concerns fish. Fish 
dealers, or at least their hirelings, always look as though 
they had never known a bath and are covered with 
slime and scales, and here, they wore a peculiar kind of 
rubber hat on which tubs or pans of fish could be carried. 
The hats were quite flat and round and reminded me of a 
smashed ** stovepipe " as the silk hat has been derisively 
called. The peasant habit of carrying bundles on the 
head was here demonstrated to be a common character- 
istic of London. 

On another morning I visited Pimlico and the neigh- 
borhood of Vincent Square. I was delighted with 
the jumble of life I found there, particularly in Strut- 
ton Ground and Churton Street. Horse Ferry Road 
touched me as a name and Lupus Street was strangely 
suggestive of a hospital, not a wolf. 

It was here that I encountered my first coster cart, 
drawn by the tiniest little donkey you ever saw, his ears 
standing up most nobly and his eyes suggesting the mel- 
low philosophy of indifference. The load he hauled, 
spread out on a large table-like rack and arranged neatly 
in baskets, consisted of vegetables — potatoes, tomatoes, 
cabbage, lettuce and the like. A bawling merchant or 
peddler followed in the wake of the cart, calling out his 
wares. He was not arrayed in coster uniform, however, 
as it has been pictured in America. I w^as delighted to 



THE THAMES 93 

listen to the cockney accent in Strutton Ground where 
" 'Ere you are, Lydy," could be constantly heard, and 
" Foine potytoes these 'ere, Madam, hextra noice." 

In Earl Street I found an old cab-yard, now turned 
into a garage, where the remnants of a church tower 
were visible, tucked away among the jumble of other 
things. I did my best to discover of what it had been a 
part. No one knew. The ex-cabman, now dolefully 
washing the wheels of an automobile, informed me that 
he had " only been workin' 'ere a little wile," and the fore- 
man could not remember. But it suggested a very an- 
cient English world — as early as the Normans. Just 
beyond this again I found the saddest little chapel — part 
of an abandoned machine-shop, with a small hand-bell 
over the door which was rung by means of a piece of 
common binding-twine ! Who could possibly hear it, I 
reflected. Inside was a wee chapel, filled with benches 
constructed of store boxes and provided with an altar 
where some form of services was conducted. There 
was no one to guard the shabby belongings of the place 
and I sat down and meditated at length on the curiosity 
of the religious ideal. 

In another section of the city where I walked — Ham- 
mersmith — and still another — Seven Kings — I found 
conditions which I thought approximated those in the 
Bronx, New York, in Brooklyn, in Chicago and else- 
where. I could not see any difference between the lines 
of store-front apartment houses in Seven Kings and 
Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush for that matter, 
and those in Flatbush, Brooklyn or the South End of 
Philadelphia. You saw the difference when you looked 
at the people and, if you entered a tavern, America was 
gone on the instant. The barmaid settled that and the 
peculiar type of idler found here. I recall in Seven 
Kings being entertained by the appearance of the work- 



94 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ing-men assembled, their trousers strapped about the 
knees, their hats or caps pulled jauntily awry. Always 
the English accent was strong and, at times, here in 
London, it became unintelligible to me. They have a 
lingo of their own. In the main I could make it out, 
allowing for the appearance or disappearance of ** h's " 
at the most unexpected moments. 

The street cars in the outlying sections are quite the 
same as in America and the variety of stores about as 
large and bright. In the older portions, however, the 
twisting streets, the presence of the omnibus in great 
numbers, and of the taxi-stands at the more frequented 
corners, the peculiar uniforms of policemen, mail-men, 
street-sweepers (dressed like Tyrolese mountaineers), 
messenger-boys, and the varied accoutrements of the sol- 
diery gave the great city an individuality which caused 
me to realize clearly that I was far from home — a 
stranger in a strange land. As charming as any of the 
spectacles I witnessed were the Scotch soldiers in bare 
legs, kilts, plaid and the like swinging along with a heavy 
stride like Norman horses or — singly — making love to a 
cockney English girl on a 'bus top perhaps. The English 
craze for pantomime was another thing that engaged my 
curious attention and why any reference to a mystic and 
presumably humorous character known as " Dirty Dick " 
should evoke such volumes of applause. 



CHAPTER XII 

MARLOWE 

AFTER I had been at Bridgely Level four or five 
days Barfleur suggested that I visit Marlowe, 
which was quite near by on the Thames, a place 
which he said fairly represented the typical small country 
town of the old school. 

" You will see there something which is not so gener- 
ally common now in England as it was — a type of life 
which is changing greatly, I think; and perhaps you had 
better see that now before you see much more." 

I promised to go and Barfleur gave positive instruc- 
tions as to how this was to be achieved. I was to say 
to the maid when I would be ready. Promptly at that 
hour one of the boys was to come and escort me to some 
point in the road where I could see Marlowe. From 
there I was to be allowed to proceed alone. 

"You won't want to be bothered with any company, 
so just send him back. You '11 find it very interesting." 

The afternoon had faired up so beautifully that I de- 
cided I must go out of doors. I was sick of writing. 
I gave notice to Dora, the maid, at luncheon that I should 
want one of the boys for a guide at three o'clock, and at 
ten minutes of the hour Percy entered my room with 
the air of a soldier. 

" When shall you be ready for your walk to Mar- 
lowe?" he asked, in his stately tone. 

" In just ten minutes now." 

" And have you any objection to our walking to Mar- 
lowe with you ? " 

" Are there two of you? " 

95 



96 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" Yes. My brother Charles and myself." 

" None whatever. Your father does n't mind, does 
he?" 

" No, he does n't mind." 

So at three Percy and Charles appeared at the window. 
Their faces were eager with anticipation and I went at 
once to get my cap and coat. We struck out along a 
road between green grass, and although it was Decem- 
ber you would have thought it April or May. The at- 
mosphere was warm and tinged with the faintest, most 
delicate haze. A lovely green moss, very fine, like pow- 
dered salt, was visible on the trunks of the trees. Crows 
were in the air, and robins — an English robin is a sol- 
emn-looking bird — on the lawns. I heaved a breath 
of delight, for after days of rain and chill this burst of 
golden light was most delicious. 

On the way, as I was looking about, I was being called 
upon to answer questions such as : " Are there any trees 
like these in Amayreeka ? Do you have such fine weather 
in Amayreeka? Are the roads as good as this in 
Amayreeka ? " 

" Quite as good as this," I replied, referring to the one 
on which we were walking, for it was a little muddy. 

The way lay through a patch of nearly leafless trees, 
the ground strewn thick with leaves, and the sun break- 
ing in a golden shower through the branches. I laughed 
for joy at being alive — the hour was so fine. Presently, 
after going down a bank so steep that it was impossible 
not to run if you attempted to walk fast, we came to an 
open field, the west border of which was protected by a 
line of willows skirting the banks of a flume which gave 
into the Thames somewhere. Below the small bridge 
over which we passed was fastened a small punt, that 
quaint little boat so common on the Thames. Beyond 
that was a very wide field, fully twenty acres square, with 



MARLOWE 97 

a yellow path running diagonally across it and at the end 
of this path was Marlowe. 

In the meantime my young friends insisted on dis- 
cussing the possibility of war between America and 
England and I was kept busy assuring them that England 
would not be able to do anything at all with the United 
States. The United States was so vast, I said. It was 
full of such smart people. While England was attempt- 
ing to do something with its giant navy, we should be 
buying or building wonderful ships and inventing marvel- 
ous machines for destroying the enemy. It was useless to 
plead with me as they did that England had a great army 
and we none. " We can get one," I insisted, " oh, a much 
vaster army than you could." 

" And then Can-ee-dah," insisted Percy wisely, 
" while you would be building your navy or drilling your 
army, we should be attacking you through Can-ee-dah." 

" But Canada does n't like you," I replied. " And be- 
sides it only has six million people." 

He insisted that Canada was a great source and hope 
and I finally said : " Now, I '11 tell you what I '11 do. 
You want England to whip the United States, don't 
you?" 

" Yes," echoed both Percy and Charles heartily. 

" Very well, then for peace and quiet's sake, I '11 agree 
that it can. England can whip the United States both 
on sea and land. Now is that satisfactory?" 

" Yes," they echoed, unanimously. 

" Very well then," I laughed. " It is agreed that the 
United States is badly beaten everywhere and always by 
England. Isn't Marlowe lovely?" and fixed my inter- 
ested gaze on the approaching village. 

In the first glimpse of Marlowe some of the most joy- 
ous memories of my childhood came back. I don't know 
whether you as a boy or a girl loved to look in your first 



98 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

reader at pictures of quaint little towns with birds fl3'ing 
above belfries and gabled roofs standing free in some 
clear, presumably golden air, but I did. And here, across 
this green field lay a little town, the sweetness of which 
\vas most appealing. The most prominent things were 
an arched bridge and a church, with a square gray bel- 
fry, set in a green, tree-grown church-yard. I could see 
the smooth surface of the Thames running beside it, and 
as I live, a flock of birds in the sky. 

"Are those rooks?" I asked of Percy, hoping for 
poetry's sake that they were. 

" Rooks or crows," he replied, " I don't know which." 

" Are there rooks in Amayreeka? " 

" No — there are no rooks." 

" Ah, that 's something." 

I walked briskly because I wanted to reach this pretty 
scene while the sun was still high, and in five minutes 
or so we were crossing the bridge. I was intensely in- 
terested in the low gray stone houses, with here and 
there a walk in front with a gate, and a very pretty 
churchyard lying by the water, and the sylvan loveliness 
of the Thames itself. 

On the bridge I stopped and looked at the water. It 
was as smooth as glass and tinged with the mellow light 
which the sun casts when it is low in the west. There 
were some small boats anchored at a gate which gave 
into some steps leading up to an inn — The Compleat 
Angler. On the other side, back of the church was an- 
other inn — the Lion and Elk or something like that — 
and below the bridge, more towards the west, an old 
man in a punt, fishing. There was a very old man such 
as I have often seen pictured in Punch and the Sketchy 
sitting near the support of the bridge, a short black pipe 
between his very wrinkled lips. He was clad in thick 
greenish-brown clothes and heavy shoes and a low flat 



MARLOWE 99 

hat some curate may have discarded. His eyes, which 
he turned up at me as I passed, were small and shrewd, 
set in a withered, wrinkled skin, and his hands were a 
collection of dried lines, hke wrinkled leather. 

" There," I thought, " is a type quite expressive of all 
England in its rural form. Pictures of England have 
been teaching me that all my life." 

I went into the church, which was located on the site 
of one built in the thirteenth century — and on the wall 
near the door was a list of the resident vicars and their 
patrons, beginning with some long-since-forgotten soul. 
The monks and the abbots of the pre-Reformation period 
were indicated and the wars of the Reformation also. 
I think that bridge which I had crossed had been de- 
stroyed by Cromwell and rebuilt only sixty or seventy 
years before, but my memory is not good and I will not 
guarantee these facts. 

From the church we went out into the street and found 
an old stock inside an iron fence, dating from some older 
day where they punished people after that fashion. We 
came to a store which was signaled by a low, small-paned 
window let into a solid gray wall, where were chocolates 
and candies and foreign-manufactured goods with labels 
I had never seen before. It is a strange sensation to go 
away from home and leave all your own familiar patent 
medicines and candies and newspapers and whiskies and 
journey to some place where they never saw or heard 
of them. * 

Here was Marlowe, and lovely as it was, I kept 
saying to myself, " Yes, yes, it is delicious, but how 
terrible it would be to live here ! I could n't. It's a 
dead world. We have passed so far beyond this." I 
walked through the pretty streets as smooth and clean 
as though they had been brushed and between rows of 
low, gray, winding houses which curved in pretty lines, 



loo A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

but for the life of me I could not help swinging between 
the joy of art for that which is alive and the sorrow for 
something that is gone and will never be, any more. 
Everything, everything spoke to me of an older day. 
These houses — all of them were lower than they need 
be, grayer than they need be, thicker, older, sadder. I 
could not think of gas or electricity being used here, al- 
though they were, or of bright broad windows, open 
plumbing, modern street cars, a stock of modern, up-to- 
date goods, which I am sure they contained, I was im- 
pressed by a grave silence which is apathetic to me as 
nothing else — a profound peace. "I must get out of 
this," I said to myself, and yet I was almost hugging my- 
self for joy at the same time. 

I remember going into one courtyard where an inn 
might once have been and finding in there a furniture 
shop, a tin shop, a store room of some kind and a stable, 
all invisible from the street. Do you recall Dickens' 
description of busy inn scenes ? You came into this one 
under the chamber belonging to a house which was built 
over the entry way. There w^as no one visible inside, 
though a man did cross the court finally with a wheel 
spoke in his hand. One of the houses or shops had a 
little circular cupola on it, quite white and pretty and 
surmounted by a faded weather cock. " How lovely," 
I said, " how lovely," but I was as sad as I could be. 

In the stores in the main street were always small, 
many-paned windows. There w^ere no lights as yet 
and the rooms into which I peered and the private 
doors gave glimpses of things which reminded me of the 
poorest, most backward and desolate sections of our own 
country. 

I saw an automobile here and there, not many, and 
some girls on bicycles, — not very good looking. Say 
what you will, you could not find an atmosphere like this 



MARLOWE loi 

in an American town, however small, unless it had al- 
ready been practically abandoned. It would not contain 
a contented population of three or four hundred. In- 
stead of saloons I saw " wine and spirit merchants " and 
also " Mrs. Jane Sawyer, licensed wine and spirit dealer." 
The butcher shops were the most American things I saw, 
because their ruddy goods were all displayed in front 
with good lights behind, and the next best things were 
the candy stores. Dressmakers, milliners, grocers, 
hardware stores, wine shops, anything and everything — 
were apparently concealed by solid gray walls or at best 
revealed by small-paned windows. In the fading after- 
noon I walked about hunting for schools, some fine pri- 
vate houses, some sense of modernness — but no — it was 
not there. I noticed that in two directions the town 
came abruptly to an end, as though it had been cut off by 
a knife, and smooth, open, green fields began. In the 
distance you could see other towns standing out like the 
castellated walls of earlier centuries — but here was an 
end, sharp, definite, final, 

I saw at one place — the end of one of these streets 
and where the country began — an old gray man in a 
shabby black coat bending to adjust a yoke to his shoul- 
ders to the ends of which were attached two buckets 
filled with water. He had been into a low, gray, one- 
story inn entitled, " Ye Bank of England," before which 
was set a bench and also a stone hitching post. For all 
the world he looked like some old man in Hardy, wend- 
ing his fading, reflective way homeward. I said to my- 
self here — England is old ; it is evening in England and 
they are tired. 

I w^ent back toward the heart of things along another 
street, but I found after a time it was merely taking me 
to another outer corner of the town. It was gray now, 
and I was saying to my young companions that they must 



I02 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

be hurrying on home — that I did not intend to go back 
so soon. " Say I will not be home for dinner," I told 
them, and they left after a time, blessed with some mod- 
ern chocolate which they craved very much. 

Before they left, however, we reconnoitered another 
street and this led me past low, one-story houses, the like 
of which, I insist, can rarely be duplicated in America. 
Do you recall the log cabin? In England it is preserved 
in stone, block after block of it. It originated there. 
The people, as I went along, seemed so thick and stolid 
and silent to me. They were healthy enough, I thought, 
but they were raw, uncouth, mirthless. There was not 
a suggestion of gaiety anywhere — not a single burst of 
song. I heard no one whistling. A man came up be- 
hind us, driving some cattle, and the oxen were quite 
upon me before I heard them. But there were no loud 
cries. He was so ultra serious. I met a man pushing 
a dilapidated baby carriage. He was a grinder of knives 
and mender of tinware and this was his method of per- 
ambulating his equipment. I met another man pushing 
a hand cart with some attenuated remnants of furniture 
in it. " What is that? " I asked. " What is he? " 

" Oh, he 's somebody who 's moving. He has n't a 
van, you know." 

Moving! Here was food for pathetic reflection. 

I looked into low, dark doors where humble little tin 
and glass-bodied lamps were beginning to flicker. 

" Thank God, my life is different from this," I said, 
and yet the pathos and the beauty of this town was grip- 
ping me firmly. It was as sweet as a lay out of Horace 
— as sad as Keats. 

Before a butcher shop I saw a man trying to round up 
a small drove of sheep. The grayish-yellow of their 
round wooly backs blended with the twilight. They 
seemed to sense their impending doom, for they ran here 



MARLOWE 103 

and there, poking their queer thin noses along the ground 
or in the air and refusing to enter the low, gray entry- 
way which gave into a cobbled yard at the back where 
were located the deadly shambles they feared. The 
farmer who was driving them wore a long black coat and 
he made no sound, or scarcely any. 

"Sooey!" he called softly — " Ssh," as he ran here 
and there — this way and that. 

The butcher or his assistant came out and caught one 
sheep, possibly the bell-wether, by the leg and hauled 
him backward into the yard. Seeing this, the silly sheep, 
not recognizing the enforced leadership, followed after. 
Could there be a more convincing commentary on the 
probable manner in which the customs and forms of life 
have originated? 

I walked out another long street, quite alone now in the 
dusk, and met a man driving an ox, also evidently to 
market. 

There was a school in session at one place, a boys' 
school — low, ancient in its exterior equipment and si- 
lent as I passed. It was out, but there was no running 
— no hallooing. The boys were going along chatting 
rather quietly in groups. I do not understand this. The 
American temper is more ebullient. I went into one 
bar — Mrs. Davidge's — and found a low, dark room, 
with a very small grate fire burning and a dark little bar 
where were some pewter mugs, some pink-colored glasses 
and a small brass lamp with a reflector. Mrs. Davidge 
must have served me herself, an old, slightly hunched lady 
in a black dress and gray gingham apron. " Can this 
place do enough business to support her? " I asked myself. 
There was no one in the shop while I was there. 

The charm of Marlowe to me was its extreme remote- 
ness from the life I had been witnessing in London and 
elsewhere. It was so simple. I had seen a comfortable 



I04 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

inn somewhere near the market place and this I was idly 
seeking, entertaining myself with reflections the while. 
I passed at one place a gas manufacturing plant which 
looked modern enough, in so far as its tank was con- 
cerned, but not otherwise, and then up one dark street 
under branches of large trees and between high brick 
walls, in a low doorway, behind which a light was shin- 
ing, saw a shovel-hatted curate talking to an old woman 
in a shawl. All the rest was dark. At another corner 
I saw a thin old man, really quite reverential looking, 
with a peaked intelligent face, fine in its Hues (like Cal- 
vin or Dante or John Knox) and long thin white hair, 
who was pulling a vehicle — a sort of revised baby 
carriage on which was, of all things, a phonograph with 
a high flower-like tin horn. He stopped at one corner 
where some children were playing in the dark and put- 
ting on a record ground out a melody which I did not 
consider very gay or tuneful. The children danced, but 
not, however, w-ith the lightness of our American children. 
The people here seemed either like this old man, sad and 
old and peaked, with a fine intellectuality apparent, or 
thick and dull and red and stodgy. 

When I reached the market I saw a scene which some- 
thing — some book or pictures had suggested to me be- 
fore. Solid women in shawls and flat, shapeless wrecks 
of hats, and tall shambling men in queer long coats and 
high boots — drovers they looked like — going to and 
fro. Children were playing about and laborers were go- 
ing home, talking a dialect which I could not understand, 
except in part. 

Five men came into the square and stood there under 
the central gas lamp, with its two arms each with a 
light. One of them left the others and began to sing 
in front of various doors. He sang and sang — " Annie 
Laurie," " Auld Lang Syne," " Sally in our Alley," in a 



MARLOWE 105 

queer nasal voice, going in and coming out again, empty- 
handed I fancy. Finally he came to me. 

" Would you help us on our way? " he asked. 

"Where are you going? " I inquired. 

" We are way-faring workmen," he replied simply, 
and I gave him some coppers — those large English 
" tuppences " that annoyed me so much. He went back 
to the others and they stood huddled in the square to- 
gether like sheep, conferring, but finally they went off 
together in the dark. 

At the inn adjacent I expected to find an exceptional 
English scene of some kind but I was more or less dis- 
appointed. It was homey but not so different from old 
New England life. The room was large with an open 
fire and a general table set with white linen and plates 
for a dozen guests or more. A shambling boy in clothes 
much too big for him came and took my order, turning 
up the one light and stirring the fire. I called for a 
paper and read it and then I sat wondering whether the 
food would be good or bad. 

While I was waiting a second traveler arrived, a small, 
dapper, sandy-haired person, with shrewd, fresh, in- 
quisitive eyes — a self-confident and yet clerkly man. 

" Good evening," he said, and I gave him the time of 
day. He bustled to a little writing table nearby and 
sat down to write, calling for a pen, paper, his slip- 
pers — I was rather puzzled by that demand — and 
various other things. On sight this gentleman (I 
suppose the English would abuse me for that word) 
looked anything but satisfactory. I suspected he was 
Scotch and that he was cheap minded and narrow. 
Later something about his manner and the healthy, brisk 
way in which, when his slippers came, he took off his 
shoes and put them on — quite cheerful and homelike — ■ 
soothed me. 



ic6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" He is n't so bad," I thought. " He 's probably a 
traveling salesman — the English type. I 'd better be 
genial, I may learn something." 

Soon the waiter returned (arrayed by this time, re- 
markable to relate, in a dress suit the size of which 
was a piece of pure comedy in itself), and brought the 
stranger toast and chops and tea. The latter drew up 
to the other end of the table from me with quite an air 
of appetite and satisfaction. 

" They don't usually put us fellows in with you," he 
observed, stating something the meaning of which I did 
not grasp for the moment. " Us traveling men usually 
have a separate dining- and writing-room. Our place 
seems to be shut up here to-night for some reason. I 
would n't have called for my slippers here if they had the 
other room open." 

" Oh, that 's quite all right," I replied, gathering some 
odd class distinction. " I prefer company to silence. 
You say you travel? " 

" Yes, I 'm connected with a house in London. I 
travel in the south of England." 

" Tell me," I said, " is this a typical English town 
from the point of view of life and business, or is it the 
only one of its kind ? It 's rather curious to me." 

" It 's one of the poorest I know, certainly the poorest 
I stop at. There is no life to speak of here at all. If 
you want to see a typical English town where there 's 
more life and business you want to see Canterbury or 
Maidenhead. No, no, you must n't judge England by 
this. I suppose you 're traveling to see things. You 're 
not English, I see." 

" No, I 'm from America. I come from New 
York." 

" I had a strong notion before I came to London to 
go to America after I left school " — and to have heard 



MARLOWE 107 

him pronounce school alone would have settled his iden- 
tity for those who know the Scotch. " Some of my 
friends went there, but I decided not. I thought I 'd 
try London instead and I 'm glad I did." 

"You like it?" 

" Oh, yes, from a money point I do. I make perhaps 
fifty per cent, more than I did in Scotland but I may 
say, too, it costs me almost fifty per cent, more to live." 
He said this with a sigh. I could see Scotch thrift stick- 
ing out all over him. An interesting little man he 
proved, very intelligent, very cautious, very saving. 
You could see early religious training and keen desire 
to get up in the world in his every gesture. 

We fell into a most interesting conversation, to me, 
for knowing so little of England I v^'as anxious to know 
more. Despite the littleness of my companion and his 
clerkly manner I found him entertaining. He wanted 
to know what I thought of England and I told him — 
as much as I could judge by a few days' stay. He told 
me something of London life — its streets, sections and 
so on and asked a great many questions about America. 
He had the ability to listen intelligently which is a fine 
sign. He wanted to know particularly what traveling 
salesmen receive in America and how far their money 
goes. He was interested to know the difference between 
English and American railroads. By this time the meal 
had ended and we were toasting our toes before the 
fire. We were quite friendly. 

" It 's some little distance back to my place and I 
think I '11 be going," I said. " I don't know whether I 
really know how to get there, but I '11 try. I understand 
there is no direct railroad connection between here and 
there. I may not be able to find my way at night as 
it is." 

" Well, I '11 walk with you a Httle way if you don't 



io8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

mind," he replied solicitously. " I have nothing else to 
do." 

The idea of companionship soothed me. Walking 
around alone and standing in the market place looking 
at the tramping men had given me the blues. I felt 
particularly lonely at moments, being away from Amer- 
ica, for the difference in standards of taste and action, 
tl-e difference in modes of thought and practice, and the 
difference in money and the sound of human voices 
was growing on me. When you have lived in one 
country all your life and found yourself comfortable in 
all its ways and notions and then suddenly find yourself 
out of it and trying to adjust yourself to things that are 
different in a hundred little ways, it is rather hard. 

" That 's very nice of you. I 'd like to have you," 
and out we went, paying our bills and looking into a 
misty night. The moon was up but there was a fairly 
heavy fog and Marlowe looked sheeted and gray. Be- 
cause I stated I had not been in any of the public houses 
and was Interested to go, he volunteered to accompany 
me, though I could see that this was against his prin- 
ciples. 

" I don't drink myself," he observed, " but I will go 
in with you if you want to. Here 's one." 

We entered and found a rather dimly lighted room, 
— gas with a mantle over it, — set with small tables 
and chairs, and a short bar in one corner. Mrs. Dav- 
idge's bar had been short, too, only her room was din- 
gier and small. A middle-sized Englishman, rather 
stout, came out of a rear door, opening from behind the 
bar, and asked us what we would have. My friend 
asked for root beer. I noticed the unescapable open 
fire and the array of pink and green and blue wine 
glasses. Also the machinery for extracting beer and ale 
from kegs, a most brassy and glowing sight. Our host 



MARLOWE 109 

sold cigars and there were boards about on the tables 
for some simple games. 

This and a half-dozen other places into which we ven- 
tured gave me the true spirit of Marlowe's common life. 
I recalled at once the vast difference between this and the 
average American small town saloon. In the latter 
(Heaven preserve us from it) the trade might be greater 
or it might not, but the room would be larger, the bar 
larger, the flies, dirt, odor, abominable. I hope I am 
not traducing a worthy class, but the American saloon 
keeper of small town proclivities has always had a kind 
of horror for me. The implements of his trade have 
always been so scummy and ill-kept. The American place 
would be apt to be gayer, rougher, noisier. I am thinking 
of places in towns of the same size. Our host was no 
more like an American barkeeper than a bee is like a hor- 
net. He was a peaceful-looking man, homely, family 
marked, decidedly dull. Your American country bar- 
keeper is another sort, more intelligent, perhaps, but less 
civil, less sensible and reliable looking. The two places 
were miles apart in quality and feeling. Here in Mar- 
lowe and elsewhere in England, wherever I had occasion 
to inspect them, the public houses of the small-town 
type were a great improvement over the American vari- 
ety. They were clean and homelike and cheerful. The 
array of brass, the fire, the small tables for games, all 
pleased me. I took it to be a place more used as a 
country club or meeting-house than as in our case a 
grimy, orgiastic resort. H there were drunken men or 
women in any of the " pubs," this night I did not see 
them. My Scotch friend assured me that he believed 
them, ordinarily, to be fairly respectable. 

Not knowing my way through the woods adjacent and 
having spent much time in this way I finally decided to 
take a train or conveyance of some kind. But there was 



no A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

no train to be had for some time to come. The trains 
there were did not run my way and no " fly " w^ould 
convey me, as one bar mistress informed me, be- 
cause there w-as a hard hill to climb and the rain 
which had fallen during the day had made the roads 
batl. I began to meditate returning to the inn. Finally 
the lady observed, ** I can tell you how to get there, 
if you want to walk. It's not more than an hour 
and it is a perfectly good road all the way." She 
drew with her hnger an outline of the twists of the 
road. "If you 're not afraid of a few screech owls, 
there 's nothing to harm you. You go to the bridge up 
here, cross it and take the first road to your left. When 
you come to a culvert about a mile out you will find three 
roads dividing there. One goes down the hollow to 
somewhere, I forgot the name; one goes up the hill to 
Bridgely Level, it 's a bridle path ; and one goes to the 
right. It 's a smooth, even road — that 's the one you 
w^int." 

It was a lovely night. The moon overhead was clear 
and bright and the fog gave the fields a white eerie look. 
As we walked, my friend regaled me with what he said 
was a peculiar custom among English traveling men. 
At all English inns there is what is known as the travel- 
ing men's club. The man who has been present at 
any inn on any stated occasion for the greatest number 
of hours or days is ipso facto, president of this club. 
The traveling man who has been there next longest if 
only for ten minutes less than the first, or more than 
the third, is vice president. Every inn ser^'^es what is 
known as the traveling man's dinner at twelve o'clock 
or thereabouts and he who is president by virtue of the 
qualifications above described, is entitled to sit at the 
head of the table and carve and serve the roast. The 
vice president, if there be one, sits at the foot of the 



MARLOWE III 

table and carves and serves the fowl. When there are 
two or more traveling men present, enough to provide 
a president and a vice president for this dinner, there is 
a regular order of procedure to be observed. The presi- 
dent arriving takes his seat first at the head of the table; 
the vice president then takes his place at the foot of the 
table. The president, when the roast beef is served, lifts 
the cover of the dish and says, " Mr. Vice President, we 
have here, I see, some roast beef." The vice president 
then lifts the cover of his dish and says, '* Mr. President 
we have here, I see, some roast goose." " Gentlemen," 
then says the president, bowing to the others present, 
" tlie dinner is for all," and begins serving the roast. The 
vice president later does his duty in turn. The next day 
in all likelihood, the vice president or some other be- 
comes president, and so it goes. My little Scotchman 
was most interested in telling me this, for it appealed to 
his fancy as it did to mine and I could see he relished 
the honor of being president in his turn. 

It was while he was telling this that we saw before us 
three paths, the middle one and the one to the right go- 
ing up through the dark woods, the one to the left merely 
skirting the woods and keeping out in the light. 

" Let 's see, it 's the left you want, is n't it? " he asked. 

" No, it 's the right," I replied. 

" I think she said the left," he cautioned. " Well, 
anyhow here's a sign post. You lift me up and I'll 
read what it says." 

It was n't visible from the ground. 

I caught him about the legs and hoisted him aloft and 
he peered closely at all three signs. He was a dapper, 
light little man. 

" You 're right," he said. 

We shook hands and wished each other luck. He 
struck off back along the road lie had coine in the fog 



112 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and I mounted musingly through the woods. It was 
dark and dehghtfully odorous, the fog in the trees, struck 
by the moonhght, looking like moving sheeted ghosts. 
I went on gaily expecting to hear a screech owl but not 
one sounded. After perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes 
of walking I came out into the open road and then I 
found that I really did not know where Bridgely Level 
was after all. There was no sign. 

I went from house to house in the moonlight — it was 
after midnight — rousing drowsy Englishmen who 
courteously gave me directions and facing yowling dogs 
who stood in the open roadway and barked. I had to 
push one barking guardian out of the way with my hands. 
All was silent as a church yard. Finally I came to a 
family of Americans who were newly locating for the 
winter not far from Bridgely Level and they put me 
right. I recall the comment of the woman who opened 
the door: "You're an American, aren't you?" and 
the interest she took in being sure that I would find my 
way. When I finally reached my door I paused in the 
garden to survey the fog-lined valley from which came 
the distant bark of a dog. 



CHAPTER XIII 

LILLY : A GIRL OF THE STREETS 

I STOOD one evening in Piccadilly, at the dinner 
hour, staring into the bright shop windows. Lon- 
don's display of haberdashery and gold and silver 
ornaments interests me intensely. It was drizzling and 
I had no umbrella ; yet that situation soon ceases to annoy 
one in England. I walked on into Regent Street and 
stopped under an arc light to watch the home-surging 
crowds — the clerks, men and women, the boys and 
girls. 

The thought was with me as I walked in the rain, 
" Where shall I dine? How shall I do it? " I wandered 
through New Bond Street; and looking idly at the dark 
stores, as I came back along Piccadilly, I saw two girls, 
arm in arm, pass by. One of them looked over her 
shoulder at me and smiled. She was of medium size 
and simply dressed. She was pretty in the fresh Eng- 
lish way, with large, too innocent eyes. The girls paused 
before a shop window and as I stopped beside them and 
looked at the girl who had smiled, she edged over toward 
me and I spoke to her. 

" Would n't you like to take the two of us? " she asked 
with that quaint odd accent of the Welsh. Her voice 
was soft and her eyes were as blue and weak in their 
force as any unsophisticated girl's might well be. 

" This girl is n't hard and vulgar," I said to myself. 
I suppose we all pride ourselves on knowing something of 
character in women. I thought I did. 

" No," I replied rather directly to her question. 

"3 



114 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" Not to-night. But let 's you and I go somewhere for 
dinner." 

" Would you mind givin' my friend a shillin' ? " she 
asked. 

" Not at all," I replied. " There you are." 

It was a wet night, chill and dreary, and on second 
thought I made it half-a-crown. The second girl went 
away — a girl with a thin white face — and I turned to 
my companion. 

" Now," I said, " what shall we do ? " It was nearly 
eight o'clock and I was wondering where I could go 
with such a girl to dine. Her clothes, I perceived, were a 
mere patchwork. Her suit was of blue twill, worn shiny. 
She wore the cheapest kind of a feather boa and her hat 
was pathetic. But the color of her cheeks was that won- 
derful apple color of the English and her eyes — really 
her eyes were quite a triumph of nature — soft and deep 
blue, and not very self -protective. 

" Poor little storm-blown soul," I thought as I looked 
at her. "Your life isn't much. A vague, conscience- 
less thing (in the softer sense of that word). You have 
a chilly future before you." 

She looked as though she might be nineteen. 

" Let 's see ! Have you had your dinner? " I asked. 

" No, sir." 

" Where is there a good restaurant ? Not too smart, 
you know." 

" Well, there 's L.'s Corner House." 

"Oh, yes, where is that? Do you go there yourself, 
occasionally ? " 

" Oh, yes, quite often. It's very nice, I think." 

" We might go there," I said. " Still, on second 
thought, I don't think we will just now. Where is the 
place you go to — the place you take your — friends ? " 

" It 's at No. — Great Titchfield Street." 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 115 

" Is that an apartment or a hotel? " 

" It 's a flat, sir, my flat. The lady lets me bring my 
friends there. If you like, though, we could go to a 
hotel. Perhaps it would be better." 

I could see that she was uncertain as to what I would 
think of her apartment. 

" And where is the hotel ? Is that nice ? " 

" It 's pretty good, sir, not so bad." 

I smiled. She was holding a small umbrella over her 
head. 

*' We had better take a taxi and get out of this rain." 

I put up my hand and hailed one. We got in, the 
driver obviously realizing that this was a street liaison, 
but giving no sign. London taxi-drivers, like London 
policemen, are the pink of civility. 

This girl was civil, obliging. I was contrasting her 
with the Broadway and the American type generally — ■ 
hard, cynical little animals. The English, from prosti- 
tutes to queens, must have an innate sense of fair play in 
the social relationship of live and let live. I say this in 
all sincerity and with the utmost feeling of respect for 
the nation that has produced it. They ought to rule, by 
right of courtesy. Alas, I fear me greatly that the force 
and speed of the American, his disregard for civility and 
the waste of time involved, will change all this. 

In the taxi I did not touch her, though she moved over 
near to me in that desire to play her role conscientiously 
line by line, scene by scene. 

"Have we far to go?" I asked perfunctorily. 

" Not very, only a little way." 

" How much ought the cab charge to be ? " 

" Not more than eight or ten pence, sir." Then, " Do 
you like girls, sir? " she asked quaintly in a very human 
effort to be pleasant under the circumstances. 

" No," I repHed, lying cautiously. 



ii6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

She looked at me uncertainly — a little over-awed, I 
think. I was surely a strange fish to swim into her net 
anyhow. 

" Very likely you don't like me then? " 

" I am not sure that I do. How should I know ? I 
never saw you before in my life. I must say you have 
mighty nice eyes," was my rather banal reply. 

" Do you think so ? " She gave me a sidelong, specu- 
lative look. 

" What nationality are you ? " I asked, 

" I 'm Welsh," she replied. 

" I did n't think you were English exactly. Your tone 
is softer." 

The taxi stopped abruptly and we got out. It was a 
shabby-looking building with a tea- or coffee-room on 
the ground floor, divided into small rooms separated by 
thin, cheap, wooden partitions. The woman who came 
to change me a half sovereign in order that I might pay 
the driver, was French, small and cleanly looking. She 
was pleasant and brisk and her whole attitude reassured 
me at once. She did not look like a person who would 
conspire to rob, and I had good reason to think more 
clearly of this as we came out later. 

" This w^ay," said my street girl, " we go up here." 

And I followed her up two flights of thinly carpeted 
stairs into a small dingy room. It was clean, after the 
French fashion. 

" It 's not so bad? " she asked with a touch of pride. 

" No. Not at all." 

" Will you pay for the room, please ? " 

The landlady had followed and was standing by. 

I asked how much and found I was to be charged five 
shillings which seemed a modest sum. 

The girl locked the door, as the landlady went out, and 
began taking off her hat and jacket. She stood before 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 117 

me with half-challenging, half-speculative eyes. She was 
a slim, graceful, shabby figure and a note of pathos came 
out unexpectedly in a little air of bravado as she rested 
one hand on her hip and smiled at me. I was standing 
in front of the mantelpiece, below which was the grate 
ready to be fired. The girl stood beside me and watched 
and plainly wondered. She was beginning to suspect 
that I was not there on the usual errand. Her eyes, so 
curiously soft and blue, began to irritate me. Her hair 
I noticed was brown but coarse and dusty — not well 
kept. These poor little creatures know absolutely noth- 
ing of the art of living or fascination. They are the 
shabbiest pawns in life, mere husks of beauty and living 
on husks. 

" Sit down, please," I said. She obeyed like a child. 
" So you 're Welsh. What part of Wales do you come 
from?" 

She told me some outlandish name. 

"What were your parents? Poor, I suppose." 

" Indeed not," she bridled with that quaint country ac- 
cent. " My father was a grocer. He had three stores." 

" I don't believe it," I said mockingly. " You women 
lie so. I don't believe you 're telling me the truth." 

It was brutal, but I wanted to get beneath the conven- 
tional lies these girls tell, if I could. 

" Why not? " Her clear eyes looked into mine. 

" Oh,' I don't. You don't look to me like the daughter 
of a man who owned three grocery stores. That would 
mean he was well-to-do. You don't expect me to be- 
lieve that, with you leading this life in London? " 

She bristled vaguely but without force. 

" Believe it or not," she said sullenly. " It 's so." 

" Tell me," I said, " how much can you make out of 
this business? " 

" Oh, sometimes more, sometimes less. I don't walk 



ii8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

every day. You know I only walk when I have to. If 
I pick up a gentleman and if he gives me a good lot I 
don't walk very soon again — not until that 's gone. I — 
I don't like to very much." 

" What do you call a good lot ? " 

" Oh, all sorts of sums. I have been given as high as 
six pounds." 

" That is n't true," I said. " You know it is n't true. 
You 're talking for effect." 

The girl's face flushed. 

" It is true. As I 'm alive it 's true. It was n't in 
this very room, but it was in this house. He was a rich 
American. He was from New York. All Americans 
have money. And he was drunk." 

"Yes, all Americans may have money," I smiled sar- 
donically, " but they don't go round spending it on such 
as you in that way. You 're not worth it." 

She looked at me, but no angry rage sprang to her 
eyes. 

" It 's true just the same," she said meekly. " You 
don't like women, do you ? " she asked. 

" No, not very much." 

" You 're a woman-hater. That 's what you are. 
I 've seen such." 

" Not a woman-hater, no. Simply not very much in- 
terested in them." 

She was perplexed, uncertain. I began to repent of 
my boorishness and recklessly lighted the fire (cost — 
one shilling). We drew up chairs before it and I plied 
her with questions. She told me of the police regula- 
tions which permit a woman to go with a man, if he 
speaks to her first, without being arrested — not other- 
wise — and of the large number of women who are in 
the business. Piccadilly is the great walking-ground, I 
understood, after one o'clock in the morning; Leicester 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 119 

Square and the regions adjacent, between seven and 
eleven. There is another place in the East End — I don't 
recall where — where the poor Jews and others walk, but 
they are a dreadful lot, she assured me. The girls are 
lucky if they get three shillings and they are poor miser- 
able drabs. I thought at the time, if she would look down 
on them, what must they be? 

Then, somehow, because the conversation was getting 
friendly, I fancy, this little Welsh girl decided perhaps 
that I was not so severe as I seemed. Experience had 
trained her to think constantly of how much money she 
could extract from men — not the normal fee, there is 
little more than a poor living in that, but extravagant 
sums which produce fine clothes and jewels, according to 
their estimate of these things. It is an old story. Other 
women had told her of their successes. Those who know 
anything of women — -the street type — know how often 
this is tried. She told the customary story of the man 
who picked her up and, having escorted her to her room, 
offered her a pound when three or four pounds or a much 
larger sum even was expected. The result was, of 
course, according to her, dreadful for the man. She 
created a great scene, broke some pottery over his head, 
and caused a general uproar in the house. It is an old 
trick. Your timid man hearing this and being possibly 
a new or infrequent adventurer in this world, becomes 
fearful of a scene. Many men are timid about bargain- 
ing with a woman beforehand. It smacks too much of 
the brutal and evil and after all there is a certain element 
of romance involved in these drabby liaisons for the 
average man, even if there is none — as there is none — 
for the woman. It is an old, sad, sickening, grim story to 
most of them and men are fools, dogs, idiots, with rarely 
anything fine or interesting in their eyes. When they 
see the least chance to betray one of them, to browbeat 



I20 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and rob or overcharge him in any way and by any trick, 

they are ready to do it. This girl, Lilly E , had 

been schooled by perhaps a hundred experienced advisers 
of the street as to how^ this was done. I know this is so, 
for afterwards she told me of how other women did it. 

But to continue : " He laid a sovereign on the table 
ar.d I went for him," she said. 

I smiled, not so much in derision as amusement. The 
story did not fit her. Obviously it was not so. 

" Oh, no, you did n't," I replied. " You are telling me 
one of the oldest stories of the trade. Now the truth is 
you are a silly little liar and you think you are going to 
frighten me, by telling me this, into giving you two or 
three pounds. You can save yourself the trouble. I 
don't intend to do it." 

I had every intention of giving her two or three if it 
suited my mood later, but she was not to know this 
now. 

My little Welsh girl was all at sea at once. Her 
powerless but really sweet eyes showed it. Something 
hurt — the pathos of her courage and endurance in the 
face of my contemptuous attitude. I had made fun of 
her obvious little lies and railed at her transparent tricks. 

" I 'm a new experience in men," I suggested. 

" Men ! I don't want to know anything more about 
them," she returned with sudden fury. " I 'm sick of 
them — the whole lot of them ! If I could get out of this 
I would. I wish I need never see another man ! " 

I did not doubt the sincerity of this outburst. But I 
affected not to believe her. 

" It 's true ! " she insisted sullenly. 

" You say that, but that 's talk. If you wanted to get 
out, you would. Why don't you get a job at something? 
You can work." 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 121 

" I don't know any trade now and I 'm too old to 
learn." 

" What nonsense ! You 're not more than nineteen 
and you could do anything you pleased. You won't, 
though. You are like all the others. This is the easy 
way. Come," I said more gently, " put on your things 
and let 's get out of this." 

Obediently and without a word she put on her coat 
and her bedraggled hat and we turned to the door. 

" Look here/' I said, " I have n't meant to be unkind. 
And Heaven knows I 've no right to throw stones at you. 
We are all in a bad mess in this world — you and I, and 
the rest. You don't know what I 'm talking about and it 
does n't matter. And now let 's find a good quiet restau- 
rant where we can dine slowly and comfortably like two 
friends who have a lot to talk over." 

In a moment she was all animation. The suggestion 
that I was going to act toward her as though she were a 
lady was, according to her standards, wildly unconven- 
tional. 

"Well, you're funny," she replied, laughing; "you 
really are funny." And I could see that for once, in a 
long time, perhaps, the faintest touch of romance had en- 
tered this sordid world for her. 

As we came out, seeing that my attitude had changed 
so radically, she asked, " Would you get me a box of 
cigarettes? I have n't any change." 

" Surely," I said, and we stepped into a tobacconist's 
shop. From there we took a taxi to L.'s Corner 
House, which she seemed to regard as sufficiently luxu- 
rious ; and from there — but I '11 tell this in detail. 

" Tell me," I said, after she had given the order, pick- 
ing something for herself and me ; " you say you come 
from Wales. Tell me the name of a typical mining- 



122 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

town which is nearer London than some of the others — 
some place which is really poor and hard-worked." 

" Well, where I come from was pretty bad," she ven- 
tured, giving me some unpronounceable name. " The 
people have n't got much to live on there." 

I wish you might have heard the peculiar purr of her 
accent. 

"And how far is that?" 

She gave me the hours from London and the rail- 
road fare in shillings. I think it was about three hours 
at most. 

"And Cardiff's pretty bad," she added. "There's 
lots of mines there. Very deep ones, too. The people 
are poor there." 

"Have you ever been in a mine?" 

"Yes, sir." 

I smiled at her civility, for in entering and leaving the 
room of the house of assignation, she had helped me on 
and off with my overcoat, quite as a servant might. 

I learned a little about Wales through her — its ill- 
paid life — and then we came back to London. How 
much did the average street girl really make? I wanted 
to know. She could n't tell me and she was quite honest 
about it. 

" Some make more than others," she said. " I 'm not 
very good at it," she confessed. " I can't make much. 
I don't know how to get money out of men." 

" I know you don't," I replied with real sympathy. 
" You 're not brazen enough. Those eyes of yours are 
too soft. You shouldn't lie though, Lilly. You 're bet- 
ter than that. You ought to be in some other work, 
worse luck." 

She did n't answer, choosing to ignore my petty 
philosophic concern over something of which I knew so 
little. 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 123 

We talked of girls — the different kinds. Some were 
really very pretty, some were not. Some had really nice 
figures, she said, you could see it. Others were made 
up terribly and depended on their courage or their au- 
dacity to trick money out of men — dissatisfied men. 
There were regular places they haunted, Piccadilly being 
the best — the only profitable place for her kind — and 
there were no houses of ill repute — the poHce did not 
allow them. 

" Yes, but that can't be," I said. " And the vice of 
London is n't concentrated in just this single spot." The 
restaurant we were in — a large but cheap affair — was 
quite a center, she said. " There must be other places. 
All the women who do this sort of thing don't come here. 
Where do they go ? " 

" There 's another place along Cheapside." 

It appeared that there were certain places where the 
girls congregated in this district — saloons or quasi-res- 
taurants, where they could go and wait for men to speak 
to them. They could wait twenty minutes at a time 
and then if no one spoke to them they had to get up and 
leave, but after twenty minutes or so they could come 
back again and try their luck, which meant that they 
would have to buy another drink. Meantime there were 
other places and they were always full of girls. 

" You shall take me to that Cheapside place," I sug- 
gested. " I will buy you more cigarettes and a box of 
candy afterwards. I will pay you for your time." 

She thought about her traveling companion whom she 
had agreed to meet at eleven, and finally promised. The 
companion was to be left to her fate. 

While we dined we talked of men and the types they 
admired. Englishmen, she thought, were usually at- 
tracted toward French girls and Americans liked Eng- 
lish girls, but the great trick was to get yourself up like 



124 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

an American girl and speak her patois — imitate her 
slang, because she was the most popular of all. 

" Americans and English gentlemen " — she herself 
made that odd distinction — " like the American girl. 
I 'm sometimes taken for one," she informed me, " and 
this hat is like the American hats." 

It was, I smiled at the compliment, sordid as it may 
appear. 

" Why do they like them ? " I asked. 

" Oh, the American girl is smarter. She walks 
quicker. She carries herself better. That 's what the 
men tell me." 

" And you are able to deceive them ? " 

"Yes." 

" That 's interesting. Let me hear you talk like an 
American, How do you do it ? " 

She pursed her lips for action. " Well, I guess I '11 
have to go now," she began. It was not a very good imi- 
tation. " All Americans say ' I guess/ " she informed 
me. 

"And what else?" I said. 

" Oh, let me see." She seemed lost for more. " You 
teach me some," she said. " I knew some other words, 
but I forget." 

For half an hour I coached her in American slang. 
She sat there intensely interested while I drilled her 
simple memory and her lips in these odd American 
phrases, and I confess I took a real delight in teaching 
her. She seemed to think it would raise her market 
value. And so in a way I was aiding and abetting vice. 
Poor little Lilly E ! She will end soon enough. 

At eleven we departed for the places where she said 
these women congregated and then I saw what the Lon- 
don underworld of this kind was like. I was told after- 
wards that it was fairly representative. 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 125 

This little girl took me to a place on a corner very- 
close to a restaurant we were leaving — I should say two 
blocks. It was on the second floor and was reached by 
a wide stairway, which gave into a room like a circle 
surrounding the head of the stairs as a center. To the 
left, as we came up, was a bar attended by four or five 
pretty barmaids, and the room, quite small, was crowded 
with men and women. The women, or girls rather, for 
I should say all ranged somewhere between seventeen and 
twenty-six, were good looking in an ordinary way, but 
they lacked the " go " of their American sisters. 

The tables at which they were seated were ranged 
around the walls and they were drinking solely to pay 
the house for allowing them to sit there. Men were 
coming in and going out, as were the other girls. Some- 
times they came in or went out alone. At other times 
they came in or went out in pairs. Waiters strolled to 
and fro, and the etiquette of the situation seemed to de- 
mand that the women should buy port wine — why, I 
don't know. It was vile stuff, tasting as though it were 
prepared of chemicals and I refused to touch it. I was 
shown local detectives, girls who worked in pairs, and 
those lowest of all creatures, the men who traffic in 
women. I learned now that London closes all its res- 
taurants, saloons, hotel bars and institutions of this kind 
promptly at twelve-thirty, and then these women are 
turned out on the streets. 

" You should see Piccadilly around one o'clock in the 
morning," my guide had said to me a little while before, 
and now I understood. They were all forced out into 
Piccadilly from everywhere. 

It was rather a dismal thing sitting here, I must confess. 
The room was lively enough, but this type of life is so 
vacant of soul. It is precisely as though one stirred in 
straw and sawdust, expecting it to be vigorous with the 



126 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

feel of growing life and freshness, such as one finds in a 
stalk or tree. It is a world of dead ideals I should say 
— or, better yet, a world in which ideals never had a 
chance to grow. The women were the veriest birds of 
prey, cold, weary, disillusioned, angry, dull, sad, perhaps ; 
the men were victims of carnal desire without the ability 
to understand how weary and disgusted the women were 
who sought to satisfy them. No clear understanding 
of life on either side; no suggestion of delicacy or ro- 
mance. No subtlety of lure or parade. Rather, coarse, 
hard bargaining in which robbery and abuse and bitter 
recrimination play a sodden part. I know of nothing 
so ghastly, so suggestive of a totally dead spirit, so bitter 
a comment on life and love and youth and hope as a 
street girl's Weary, speculative, commercial cry of — 
" Hello, sweetheart ! " 

From this first place we went to others — not so good, 
Lilly told me. 

It is a poor world. I do not attempt to explain it. 
The man or woman of bridled passion is much better 
off. As for those others, how much are they themselves 
to blame? Circumstances have so large a part in it. I 
think, all in all, it is a deadly hell-hole; and yet I know 
that talking is not going to reform it. Life, in my judg- 
ment, does not reform. The world is old. Passion in 
all classes is about the same. We think this shabby 
world is worst because it is shabby.- But is it ? Is n't 
it merely that we are different — used to different 
things? I think so. 

After buying her a large box of candy I hailed a taxi 
and took my little girl home to her shabby room and left 
her. She was very gay. She had been made quite a lit- 
tle of since we started from the region of rented rooms. 
Her purse was now the richer by three pounds. Her 
opinion had been asked, her advice taken, she had been 



LILLY: A GIRL OF THE STREETS 127 

allowed to order. I had tried to make her feel that I 
admired her a little and that I was sorry for her a little. 
At her door, in the rain, I told her I might use some of 
this experience in a book sometime. She said, " Send 
me a copy of your book. Will I be in it? " 

" Yes." 

"Send it to me, will you?" 

" If you 're here." 

" Oh, I '11 be here. I don't move often." 

Poor little Welsh waif! I thought, how long, how 
long, will she be " here " before she goes down before the 
grim shapes that lurk in her dreary path — disease, 
despair, death? 



CHAPTER XIV 

LONDON; THE EAST END 

AS interesting as any days that I spent in London 
were two in the East End, though I am sorry 
to add more drabby details to those just nar- 
rated. All my life I had heard of this particular section 
as grim, doleful, a center and sea of depraved and de- 
pressed life. 

" Nothing like the East End of London," I have 
heard people say, and before I left I expected to look 
over it, of course. My desire to do so was whetted 
by a conversation I had with the poet, John Masefield, 
who, if I remember rightly, had once lived in the ex- 
treme East End of London, Canningtown. He had 
talked of the curious physical condition of the people 
which he described as " bluggy " or stagnant. Little 
intelligence in the first place, according to him, seemed to 
be breeding less and less intelligence as time went on. 
Poverty, lack of wits, lack of ambition were fostering in- 
breeding. Such things are easy tO' say. No one can 
really tell. Even more interesting to me was the 
proffered information concerning East End amusements 
— calf-eating contests, canary-singing contests, whiffet 
races, pigeon-eating contests. I was told it would be 
hard to indicate how simple-minded the people were 
in many things and yet how low and dark in their 
moods, physical and moral. I got a suggestion of 
this some days later, when I discovered in connection with 
the police courts that every little while the court-room 
is cleared in order that terrible, unprintable, almost un- 
bearable testimony may be taken. What he said to me 

128 



LONDON; THE EAST END 129 

somehow suggested the atmosphere of the Whitechapel 
murders — those demoniac crimes that had thrilled the 
world a few years before. 

I must confess that my first impression was one of 
disappointment. America is strident and its typical 
" East Side " and slum conditions are strident also. 
There is no voiceless degradation that I have ever seen 
in America. The East Side of New York is unquestion- 
ably one of the noisiest spots in the world, if not the 
worst. It is so full of children — so full of hope too. 

I was surprised to find how distinctly different are the 
two realms of poverty in New York and London. 

On my first visit I took the subway or tube to St. 
Mary's Station, Whitechapel, and getting out, investi- 
gated all that . region which lies between there and the 
Great Eastern Railway Station and Bethnal Green and 
Shoreditch. I also reconnoitered Bethnal Green. 

It was a chill, gray, January day. The London haze 
was gray and heavy, quite depressing. Almost at once 
I noticed that this region which I was in, instead of being 
strident and blatant as in America, was peculiarly quiet. 
The houses, as in all parts of London, were exceedingly 
lO'W, two and three stories, with occasional four- and five- 
story buildings for variation, but all built out of that 
drab, yellowish-gray brick which when properly smoked 
has such a sad and yet effective air. The streets were 
not narrow, as in New York's East Side, — quite the 
contrary; but the difference in crowds, color, noise, life, 
was astounding. In New York the East Side streets, 
as I have said, are almost invariably crowded. Here 
they were almost empty. The low doors and areaways 
oozed occasional figures who were either thin, or shabby, 
or dirty, or sickly, but a crowd was not visible anywhere. 
They seemed to me to slink along in a half-hearted way 
and I, for one, experienced no sense of desperado crimi- 



I30 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

nality of any kind — only a low despair. The people 
looked too meek — too law-governed. The policeman 
must be an immense power in London. Vice? — yes. 
Poverty? — yes. I saw young boys and girls with bod- 
ies which seemed to me to be but half made up by nature 
— half done. They were ambling, lackadaisical, weary- 
looking. Low? — yes, in many cases. Filthy? — yes. 
Savage or dangerous ? — not at all. I noticed the large 
number of cheap cloth caps worn by the men and boys 
and the large number of dull gray shawls wrapped slat- 
ternwise about the shoulders of the women. This world 
looked sad enough in all conscience, inexpressibly so, but 
because of the individual houses in many instances, the 
clean streets and the dark tiny shops, not unendurable — 
even homey in instances. I ventured to ask a stalwart 
London policeman — they are all stalwart in London — 
" Where are the very poor in the East End — the poorest 
there are ? " 

" Well, most of these people hereabouts have little 
enough to live on," he observed, looking straight before 
him with that charming soldierly air the London police- 
men have — his black strap under his chin. 

I walked long distances through such streets as Old 
Montague, King Edward, Great Garden, Hope, Brick 
Lane, Salesworthy, Flower, Dean, Hare, Fuller, Ghurch 
Row, Gheshire, Hereford, — a long, long list, too long to 
give here, coming out finally at St. John's Gatholic 
Ghurch at Bethnal Green and taking a car line for streets 
still farther out. I had studied shops, doorways, areas, 
windows, with constant curiosity. The only variation 
I saw to a dead level of sameness, unbroken by trees, 
green places or handsome buildings of any kind, were 
factory chimneys and endless charitable institutions cov- 
ering, apparently, every form of human weakness or 
deficiency, but looking as if they were much drearier 



LONDON; THE EAST END 131 

than the thing they were attempting to cure. One of 
them I remember was an institution for the orphans of 
seamen, and another a hospital for sick Spanish Jews. 
The lodging-houses for working-girls and working-boys 
were so numerous as to be discouraging and so dreary 
looking that I marveled that any boy or girl should endure 
to live in them. One could sense all forms of abuse 
and distress here. It would spring naturally out of so 
low a grade of intelligence. Only a Dickens, guided by 
the lamp of genius, could get at the inward spirit of these, 
and then perhaps it would not avail. Life, in its farthest 
reaches, sinks to a sad ugly mess and stays there. 

One of the places that I came upon in my perambula- 
tions was a public washhouse, laundry and bath, estab- 
lished by the London County Council, if I remember 
rightly, and this interested me greatly. It was near 
Winchester Street and looked not unlike a low, one- 
story, factory building. Since these things are always 
fair indications of neighborhoods, I entered and asked 
permission to inspect it. I was directed to the home or 
apartment of a small martinet of a director or manager, 
quite spare and dark and cockney, who frowned on me 
quizzically when he opened his door, — a perfect devil of a 
cheap superior who was for putting me down with a black 
look. I could see that it was one of the natives he was 
expecting to encounter. 

" I would like to look over the laundry and baths," 
I said. 

" Where do you come from ? " he asked. 

" America," I replied. 

"Oh! Have you a card?" 

I gave him one. He examined it as though by some 
chance it might reveal something concerning me. Then 
he said if I would go round to the other side he would 
admit me. I went and waited a considerable time before 



132 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

he appeared. When he did, it was to lead me with a very 
uncertain air first into the room filled with homely bath 
closets, where you were charged a penny more or less — 
according to whether you had soap and towel or not — 
and where the tubs were dreary affairs with damp-looking 
wooden tops or flanges, and thence into the washroom 
and laundry-room, where at this time in the afternoon 
— about four o'clock — perhaps a score of women of 
the neighborhood were either washing or ironing. 

Dreary ! dreary ! dreary ! Ghastly ! In Italy, later, 
and southern France, I saw public washing under the 
sky, beside a stream or near a fountain — a broken, pic- 
turesque, deliciously archaic fountain in one instance. 
Here under gray skies, in a gray neighborhood, and in 
this prison-like washroom was one of the most doleful 
pictures of life the mind of man could imagine. Always 
when I think of the English, I want to go off into some 
long analysis of their character. We have so much to 
learn of life, it seems to me, and among the first things 
is the chemistry of the human body. I always marvel 
at the nature of the fluids which make up some people. 
Different climates must produce different kinds, just as 
they produce strange kinds of trees and animals. Here 
in England this damp, gray climate produces a muggy 
sort of soul which you find au nature! only when you 
walk among the very poor in such a neighborhood as 
this. Here in this wash-house I saw the low English 
au naturel, but no passing commentary such as this 
could do them justice. One would have to write a book 
in order to present the fine differences. Weakness, low- 
ness of spirit, a vague comprehension of only the sim- 
plest things, combined with a certain meaty solidarity, 
gave me the creeps. Here they were, scrubbing or 
ironing; strings tied around their protuberant stomachs 
to keep their skirts up; clothes the color of lead or darker, 



LONDON; THE EAST END 133 

and about as cheerful ; hair gray or brownish-black, thin, 
unkempt; all of them flabby and weary-looking — about 
the atmosphere one would find in an American poorhouse. 
They washed here because there were no washing facili- 
ties in their own homes — no stationary tubs, no hot or 
cold water, no suitable stoves to boil water on. It was 
equally true of ironing facilities, the director told me. 
They came from blocks away. Some women washed here 
for whole vicinities — the more industrious ones. And 
yet few came here at that — the more self-respecting 
stayed away. I learned this after a long conversation with 
my guide whose principal commentary was that they were 
a worthless lot and that you had to watch them all the 
time. " If you don't," he said in cockney English, 
" they won't keep things clean. You can't teach 'em 
scarcely how to do things right. Now and then they 
gets their hands caught." He was referring to the wash- 
ing-drums and the mangles. It was a long story, but 
all I got out of it was that this was a dreary world, that 
he was sick of his position but compelled to keep it for 
financial reasons, that he wanted as little as possible to do 
with the kind of cattle which he considered these people 
to be and that he would prefer to give it up. There 
was a touch of socialism in all this — trying to do for 
the masses — but I argued that perhaps under more gen- 
eral socialistic conditions things would be better; cer- 
tainly, one would have to secure more considerate feel- 
ings on the part of directors and some public approval 
which would bring out the better elements. Perhaps 
under truer socialism, however, public wash-houses 
would not be necessary at all. Anyhow, the cry from 
here to Bond Street and the Houses of Parliament and 
the stately world of the Lords seemed infinitely far. 
What can society do with the sad, shadowy base on which 
it rests? 



134 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

I came another day to another section of this world, 
approaching the East End via Aldgate and Commercial 
Road, and cutting through to Bethnal Green via Stepney. 
I found the same conditions — clean streets, low gray 
buildings, shabby people, a large museum whose chief 
distinction was that the floor of its central rotunda had 
been laid by women convicts ! — and towering chimneys. 
So little life existed in the streets, generally speaking, 
that I confess I was depressed. London is so far flung. 
There were a great many Jews of Russian, Roumanian 
and Slavic extraction, nearly all bearing the marks of 
poverty and ignorance, but looking shrewd enough at 
that, and a great many physically deteriorated English. 
The long-bearded Jew with trousers sagging about his 
big feet, his small derby hat pulled low over his ears, his 
hands folded tightly across his back, was as much in evi- 
dence here as on the East Side in New York. I looked 
in vain for restaurants or show places of any kind (sa- 
loons, moving pictures, etc.). There were scarcely any 
here. This whole vicinity seemed to me to be given up 
to the poorest kind of living — sad, drab, gray. No won- 
der the policeman said to me: "Most of these people 
hereabouts have little enough to live on." I 'm sure of 
it. Finally, after a third visit, I consulted with another 
writer, a reputed authority on the East End, who gave 
me a list of particular neighborhoods to look at. If 
anything exceptional was to be detected from the ap- 
pearance of the people, beyond what I have noted, I could 
not see it. I found no poor East End costers with 
buttons all over their clothes, although they once existed 
here. I found no evidence of the overcrowded home 
life, because I could not get into the houses to see. Chil- 
dren, it seemed to me, were not nearly so numerous as 
in similar areas in American cities. Even a police-court 
proceeding I saw in Avon Square was too dull to be in- 



LONDON; THE EAST END 135 

teresting. I was told I might expect the most startling 
crimes. The two hours I spent in court developed only- 
drunkenness and adultery. But as my English literary 
guide informed me, only time and familiarity with a 
given neighborhood would develop anything. I believe 
this. All I felt was that in such a dull, sordid, poor- 
bodied world any depth of filth or crime might be reached, 
but who cares to know? 



CHAPTER XV 

ENTER SIR SCORP 

DURING all my stay at Bridgely Level I had been 
hearing more or less — an occasional remark — 
of a certain Sir Scorp, an Irish knight and art 
critic, a gentleman who had some of the finest Manets 
in the world. He had given Dublin its only significant 
collection of modern pictures — in fact, Ireland should 
be substituted for Dublin, and for this he was knighted. 
He was the art representative of some great museum in 
South Africa — at Johannesburg, I think, — and he was 
generally looked upon as an authority in the matter of 
pictures. 

Barfleur came one evening to my hotel with the an- 
nouncement that Sir Scorp was coming down to Bridgely 
Level to spend Saturday and Sunday, that he would bring 
his car and that together on Sunday we three would 
motor to Oxford. Barfleur had an uncle who was a very 
learned master of Greek at that University and who, if 
we were quite nice and pleasant, might give us luncheon. 
We were, I found, to take a little side trip on Saturday 
afternoon to a place called Penn, some twenty or twenty- 
five miles from Bridgely Level, in Buckinghamshire, 
whence William Penn had come originally. 

Saturday was rainy and gloomy and I doubted whether 
we should do anything in such weather, but Barfleur was 
not easily put out I wrote all morning in my alcove, 
while Barfleur examined papers, and some time after two 
Sir Scorp arrived, — a pale, slender, dark-eyed man of 
thirty-five or thereabouts, with a keen, bird-like glance, a 
poised, nervous, sensitive manner, and that elusive, sub- 

136 



ENTER SIR SCORP 137 

tlety of reference and speech which makes the notable 
intellectual wherever you find him. For the ten thou- 
sandth time in my hfe, where intellectuals are concerned, 
I noticed that peculiarity of mind which will not brook 
equality save under compulsion. Where are your cre- 
dentials ? — such minds invariably seem to ask. How do 
you come to be what you think you are ? Is there a flaw 
in your intellectual or artistic armor? Let us see. So 
the duel of ideas and forms and methods of procedure 
begins, and you are made or unmade, in the momentary 
estimate of the individual, by your ability to withstand 
criticism. I liked Sir Scorp as intellectuals go. I liked 
his pale face, his trim black beard, his slim hands and his 
poised, nervous, elusive manner. 

" Oh, yes. So you 're new to England. I envy you 
your early impression. I am reserving for the future 
the extreme pleasure of reading you." These little 
opening civilities always amuse me. We are all on the 
stage and we play our parts perforce whether we do so 
consciously or not. 

It appeared that the chauffeur had to be provided for, 
Sir Scorp had to be given a hasty lunch. He seemed to 
fall in with the idea of a short run to Penn before dark, 
even if the day were gloomy, and so, after feeding him 
quickly before the grate fire in the drawing-room, we were 
off — Sir Scorp, Barfleur, Berenice and Percy — Bar- 
fleur's son — and myself. Sir Scorp sat with me in the 
tonneau and Barfleur and Percy in the front seat. 

Sir Scorp made no effort to strike up any quick rela- 
tionship with me — remained quite aloof and talked in 
generalities. I could see that he took himself very seri- 
ously — as well he might, seeing that, as I understood it, 
he had begun life with nothing. There were remarks- — ■ 
familiar ones concerning well-known painters, sculptors, 
architects, and the social life of England. 



138 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

This first afternoon trip was pleasant enough, acquaint- 
ing me as it did with the character of the country about 
Bridgely Level for miles and miles. Up to this time I 
had been commiserated on the fact that it was winter 
and Lwas seeing England under the worst possible condi- 
tions, but I am not so sure that it was such a great dis- 
advantage. To-day as we sped down some damp, slip- 
pery hillside where the river Thames was to be seen far 
below twisting like a letter S in the rain, I thought to my- 
self that hght and color — summer light and color — 
would help but little. The villages that we passed were 
all rain-soaked and preternaturally solemn. There were 
few if any people abroad. We did not pass a single 
automobile on the way to Penn and but a single railroad 
track. These little English villages for all the extended 
English railway system, are practically without railway 
communication. You have to drive or walk a number of 
miles to obtain suitable railway connection. 

I recall the sag-roofed, moss-patterned, vine-festooned 
cottages of once red but now brownish-green brick, half 
hidden behind high brick walls where curiously clipped 
trees sometimes stood up in sentinel order, and vines 
and bushes seemed in a conspiracy to smother the doors 
and windows in an excess of knitted leafage. Until you 
see them no words can adequately suggest the subtlety 
of age and some old order of comfort, once prevail- 
ing, but now obsolete, which these little towns and sep- 
arate houses convey. You know, at a glance, that they 
are not of this modern work-a-day world. You know 
at a glance that no power under the sun can save them. 
They are of an older day and an older thought — the 
thought perhaps that goes with Gray's " Elegy " and 
Goldsmith's " Traveller " and " Deserted Village." 

That night at dinner, before and after, we fell into 
a most stirring argument. As I recall, it started 



ENTER SIR SCORP 139 

with Sir Scorp's insisting that St. Paul's of London, 
which is a product of the skill of Sir Christopher Wren, as 
are so many of the smaller churches of London, was 
infinitely superior externally to the comparatively new 
and still unfinished Roman Catholic Cathedral of West- 
minster. With that I could not agree. I have always 
objected, anyhow, to the ground plan of the Gothic cathe- 
dral, namely, the cross, as being the worst possible 
arrangement which could be devised for an interior. It 
is excellent as a scheme for three or four interiors — 
the arms of the cross being always invisible from the 
nave- — but as one interior, how can it compare with 
the straight-lying basilica which gives you one grand for- 
ward sweep, or the solemn Greek temple with its pediment 
and glorifying rows of columns. Of all forms of archi- 
tecture, other things being equal, I most admire the Greek, 
though the Gothic exteriorly, even more than interiorly, 
has a tremendous appeal. It is so airy and florate. 

However, St. Paul's is neither Greek, Gothic, nor 
anything else very much — a staggering attempt on 
the part of Sir Christopher Wren to achieve something 
new which is to me not very successful. The dome is 
pleasing and the interior space is fairly impressive, but 
the general effect is botchy, and I think I said as much. 
Naturally this was solid ground for an argument and the 
battle raged to and fro, — through Greece, Rome, the 
Byzantine East and the Gothic realms of Europe and 
England. We finally came down to the skyscrapers of 
New York and Chicago and the railway terminals of 
various American cities, but I shall not go into that. 
What was more important was that it raised a question 
concerning the proletariate of England, — the common 
people from whom, or because of whom, all things are 
made to rise, and this was based on the final conclusion 
that all architecture is, or should be, an expression of 



140 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

national temperament, and this as a fact was partly ques- 
tioned and partly denied, I think. It began by my asking 
whether the little low cottages we had been seeing that 
afternoon — the quaint windows, varying gables, pointless 
but delicious angles, and the battered, time-worn state of 
houses generally — was an expression of the English tem- 
perament. Mind you, I love what these things stand 
for. I love the simpleness of soul which somehow is 
conveyed by Burns and Wordsworth and Hardy, and I 
would have none of change if life could be ordered so 
sweetly — if it could really stay. Alas, I know it can 
not. Compared to the speed and skill which is required 
to manipulate the modem railway trains, the express 
companies, the hotels, the newspapers, all this is helpless, 
pathetic. 

Sir Scorp's answer was yes, that they were an expres- 
sion, but that, nevertheless, the English mass was a beast 
of muddy brain. It did not — could not — quite under- 
stand what was being done. Above it were superim- 
posed intellectual classes, each smaller and more en- 
thusiastic and aware as you reach the top. At least, it 
has been so, he said, but now democracy and the news- 
papers are beginning to break up this lovely solidarity 
of simplicity and ignorance into something that is not 
so nice. 

" People want to get on now," he declared. " They 
want each to be greater than the other. They must 
have baths and telephones and railways and they want 
to undo this simplicity. The greatness of England 
has been due to the fact that the intellectual superior 
classes with higher artistic impulses and lovelier tenden- 
cies generally could direct the masses and like sheep 
they would follow. Hence all the lovely qualities of 
England; its ordered households, its beautiful cathedrals, 
its charming castles and estates, its good roads, its deli- 



ENTER SIR SCORP 141 

cate homes, and order and precedences. The magnifi- 
cent princes of the realm have been able to do so much 
for art and science because their great impulses need not 
be referred back to the mass — the ignorant, non-under- 
standing mass — for sanction." 

Sir Scorp sprang with ease to Lorenzo, the magnifi- 
cent, to the princes of Italy, to Rome and the Caesars 
for illustration. He cited France and Louis. Democ- 
racy, he declared, is never going to do for all what the 
established princes could do. Democracy is going to be 
the death of art. Not so, I thought and said, for de- 
mocracy can never alter the unalterable difference be- 
tween high and low, rich and poor, little brain and big 
brain, strength and weakness. It cannot abolish differ- 
ence and make a level plane. It simply permits the sev- 
eral planes to rise higher together. What is happening 
is that the human pot is boiling again. Nations are un- 
dergoing a transition period. We are in a maelstrom, 
which means change and reconstruction. America is go- 
ing to flower next and grandly, and perhaps after that 
Africa, or Austraha. Then, say. South America, and 
we come back to Europe by way of India, China, Japan 
and through Russia. All in turn and new great things 
from each again. Let's hope so. A pretty speculation, 
anyhow. 

At my suggestion of American supremacy. Sir Scorp, 
although he protested, no doubt honestly, that he pre- 
ferred the American to any other foreign race, was on 
me in a minute with vital criticism and I think 
some measure of insular solidarity. The English do not 
love the Americans — that is sure. They admire their 
traits — some of them, but they resent their commer- 
cial progress. The wretched Americans will not listen 
to the wise British. They will not adhere to their noble 
and magnificent traditions. They go and do things quite 



142 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

out of order and the way in which they should be done, 
and then they come over to England and flaunt the fact 
in the noble Britisher's face. This is above all things 
sad. It is evil, crass, reprehensible, anything you will, and 
the Englishman resents it. He even resents it when he is 
an Irish Englishman. He dislikes the German much — 
fears the outcome of a w^ar from that quarter — but 
really he dislikes the American more. I honestly think 
he considers America far more dangerous than Ger- 
many. What are you going to do with that vast realm 
which is " the states " ? It is upsetting the whole world 
by its nasty progressiveness, and this it should not be 
permitted to do. England should really lead. England 
should have invented all the things which the Americans 
have invented. England should be permitted to dictate 
to-day and to set the order of forms and procedures, but 
somehow it is n't doing it. And, hang it all ! the Ameri- 
cans are. We progressed through various other things, 
— an American operatic manager who was then in Lon- 
don attempting to revise English opera, an American to- 
bacco company which had made a failure of selling to- 
bacco to the English, but finally weariness claimed us all, 
and we retired for the night, determined to make Oxford 
on the morrow if the weather faired in the least. 

The next morning I arose, glad that we had had such a 
forceful argument. It was worth while, for it brought 
us all a little closer together. Barfleur, the children 
and I ate breakfast together while we were waiting 
for Scorp to come down and wondering whether we 
should really go, it w^as so rainy. Barfleur gave me a 
book on Oxford, saying that if I was truly interested I 
should look up beforehand the things that I was to see. 
Before a pleasant grate fire I studied this volume, but 
my mind was disturbed by the steadily approaching fact 
of the trip itself, and I made small progress. Somehow 



ENTER SIR SCORP 143 

during the morning the plan that Barfleur had o£ getting 
us invited to luncheon by his uncle at Oxford disappeared 
and it turned out that we were to go the whole distance 
and back in some five or six hours, having only two or 
three hours for sightseeing. 

At eleven Sir Scorp came down and then it was agreed 
that the rain should make no difference. We would go, 
anyhow. 

I think I actually thrilled as we stepped into the car, 
for somehow the exquisite flavor and sentiment of Ox- 
ford was reaching me here. I hoped we would go fast 
so that I should have an opportunity to see much of it. 
We did speed swiftly past open fields where hay cocks 
were standing drearily in the drizzling rain, and down 
dark aisles of bare but vine-hung trees, and through 
lovely villages where vines and small oddly placed win- 
dows and angles and green-grown, sunk roofs made me 
gasp for joy. I imagined how they would look in April 
and May with the sun shining, the birds flying, a soft 
wind blowing. I think I could smell the odor of roses 
here in the wind and rain. We tore through them, it 
seemed to me, and I said once to the driver, " Is there 
no law against speeding in England ? " 

" Yes," he replied, " there is, but you can't pay any 
attention to that if you want to get anywhere." 

There were graceful flocks of crows flying here and 
there. There were the same gray little moss-grown 
churches with quaint belfries and odd vine-covered win- 
dows. There were the same tree-protected borders of 
fields, some of them most stately where the trees were tall 
and dark and sad in the rain. I think an open landscape, 
such as this, with green, wet grass or brown stubble and 
low, sad, heavy, gray clouds for sky and background, 
is as delicious as any landscape that ever was. And it 
was surely not more than one hour and a half after we 



144 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

left Bridgely before we began to rush through the nar- 
row, winding streets where houses, always brick and 
stone and red walls with tall gates and vines above 
them, lined either side of the way. It was old 
— you could see that, even much that could be consid- 
ered new in England was old according to the American 
standard. The plan of the city was odd to me because 
unlike the American cities, praise be! there was no plan. 
Not an east and west street, anywhere. Not a north and 
south one. Not a four- or five-story building anywhere, 
apparently, and no wood; just wet, gray stone and red- 
dish-brown brick and vines. When I saw High Street 
and the fagade of Queens College I leaped for joy. I 
can think of nothing lovelier in either marble or bronze 
than this building line. It is so gentle, so persuasive of 
beautiful thought, such an invitation to reflection and 
tender romance. It is so obvious that men have worked 
lovingly over this. It is so plain there has been great 
care and pains and that life has dealt tenderly with all. 
It has not been destroyed or revised and revivified, but 
just allowed to grow old softly and gracefully. 

Owing to our revised plans for luncheon I had several 
marmalade sandwiches in my hand, laid in an open white 
paper which Barfleur had brought and passed around, the 
idea being that we would not have time for lunch if we 
wished to complete our visit and get back by dark. Sir 
Scorp had several meat sandwiches in another piece of 
paper equally flamboyant. I was eating vigorously, for 
the ride had made me hungry, the while my eyes searched 
out the jewel wonders of the delicious prospect before 
me. 

" This will never do," observed Sir Scorp, folding up 
his paper thoughtfully, " invading these sacred precincts 
in this ribald manner. They '11 think we 're a lot of 
American sightseers come to despoil the place." 



ENTER SIR SCORP 145 

" Such being the case," I repHed, " we '11 disgrace Bar- 
fleur for life. He has relations here. Nothing would 
give me greater pleasure." 

" Come, Dreiser. Give me those sandwiches." 

It was Barfleur, of course. 

I gave over my feast reluctantly. Then we went up 
the street, shoulder to shoulder, as it were, Berenice 
walking with first one and another. I had thought to 
bring my little book on Oxford and to my delight I could 
see that it was even much better than the book indicated. 

How shall one do justice to so exquisite a thing as Ox- 
ford, — twenty-two colleges and halls, churches, museums 
and the like, with all their lovely spires, towers, buttresses, 
ancient w^alls, ancient doors, pinnacles, gardens, courts, 
angles and nooks which turn and wind and confront each 
other and break into broad views and delicious narrow 
vistas with a grace and an uncertainty which delights and 
surprises the imagination at every turn. I can think of 
nothing more exc[uisite than these wonderful walls, so 
old that whatever color they were originally, they now 
are a fine mottled black and gray, with uncertain patches 
of smoky hue, and places where the stone has crumbled 
to a dead white. Time has done so much; tradition has 
done so much; pageantry and memory; the art of the 
architect, the perfect labor of builder, the beauty of 
the stone itself, and then nature — leaves and trees and 
the sky! This day of rain and lowery clouds — though 
Sir Scorp insisted it could stand no comparison with sun- 
shine and spring and the pathos of a delicious twilight 
was yet wonderful to me. Grays and blacks and dreary 
alterations of storm clouds have a remarkable value when 
joined with so delicate and gracious a thing as perfectly 
arranged stone. We wandered through alleys and courts 
and across the quadrangles of University College, Baliol 
College, Wadham College, Oriel College, up High Street, 



146 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

through Park Street, into the Chapel of Queens College, 
into the banquet of Baliol and again to the Bodleian Li- 
brary, and thence by strange turns and lovely gateways 
to an inn for tea. It was raining all the while and I lis- 
tened to disquisitions by Sir Scorp on the effect of the 
personalities, and the theories of both Inigo Jones and 
Christopher Wren, not only on these buildings but on 
the little residences in the street. Everywhere, Sir Scorp, 
enthusiast that he is, found something — a line of win- 
dows done in pure Tudor, a clock tower after the best 
fashion of Jones, a fagade which was Wren pure and 
simple. He quarreled delightfully, as the artist always 
will, with the atrocity of this restoration or that failure 
to combine something after the best manner, but barring 
the worst errors which showed quite plainly enough in 
such things as the Oxford art gallery and a modern 
church or two — it was all perfect. Time and tradition 
have softened, petted, made lovely even the plainest sur- 
faces. 

I learned f-rom Barfleur where Walter Pater and 
Oscar Wilde lived, where Shelley's essay on atheism was 
burned, and where afterwards a monument was erected 
to him, where some English bishops were burned for re- 
fusing to recant their religious beliefs and where the 
dukes and princes of the realm were quartered in their 
college days. Sir Scorp descanted on the pity of the fact, 
that some, who would have loved a world such as this 
in their youth, could never afford to come here, while 
others who were as ignorant as boors and as dull as 
swine, were for reasons of wealth and family allowed 
to wallow in a world of art which they could not possibly 
appreciate. Here as elsewhere I learned that professors 
were often cads and pedants — greedy, jealous, narrow, 
academic. Here as elsewhere precedence was the great 
fetish of brain and the silly riot of the average college stu- 



ENTER SIR SCORP 147 

dent was as common as in the meanest school. Life is the 
same, be art great or Httle, and the fame of even Oxford 
cannot gloss over the weakness of a humanity that will 
alternately be low and high, shabby and gorgeous, narrow 
and vast. 

The last thing we saw were some very old portions of 
Christ College, which had been inhabited by Dominican 
monks, I believe, in their day, and this thrilled and de- 
lighted me quite as much as anything. I forgot all about 
the rain in trying to recall the type of man and the type 
of thought that must have passed in and out of those 
bolt-riven doors, but it was getting time to leave and my 
companions would have none of my lagging delight. 

It was blowing rain and as we were leaving Oxford 
I lost my cap and had to walk back after it. Later I lost 
my glove ! As we rode my mind went back over the 
ancient chambers, the paneled woodwork, stained glass 
windows, and high vaulted ceilings I had just seen. The 
heavy benches and somber portraits in oil sustained them- 
selves in my mind clearly. Oxford, I said to myself, was 
a jewel architecturally. Another thousand years and it 
would be as a dream of the imagination. I feel now 
as if its day were done; as if so much gentle beauty can 
not endure. I had seen myself the invasion of the elec- 
tric switch board and the street car in High Street, and 
of course other things will come. Already the western 
world is smiling at a solemnity and a beauty which are 
noble and lovely to look upon, but which cannot keep pace 
with a new order and a new need. 



CHAPTER XVI 

A CHRISTMAS CALL 

THE Christmas holidays were drawing near and 
Barfleur was making due preparations for the 
celebration of that event. He was a stickler 
for the proper observance of those things which have 
national significance and national or international feeling 
behind them. Whatever joy he might get out of such 
things, much or little, I am convinced that he was much 
more, concerned lest some one should fail of an appro- 
priate share of happiness than he was about anything 
else. I liked that in Barfleur. It touched me greatly, 
and made me feel at times as though I should like to pat 
him on the head. 

During all my youth in Indiana and elsewhere I had 
been fed on that delightful picture, " Christmas in Eng- 
land," concocted first, I believe (for American con- 
sumption, anyhow), by Washington Irving, and from 
him rehashed for magazines and newspaper purposes un- 
til it had come to be romance ad imuseum. The boar's 
head carried in by the butler of Squire Bracebridge, the 
ancient peacock pie with the gorgeous tail feathers ar- 
ranged at one end of the platter and the crested head at 
the other, the yule log, the mistletoe berries, and the 
Christmas choristers singing outside of windows and 
doors of echoing halls, had vaguely stood their ground 
and as such had rooted themselves in my mind as some- 
thing connected with ancestral England. I did not ex- 
actly anticipate anything of this kind as being a part of 
present-day England, or of Barfleur's simple country res- 

148 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 149 

idence, but, nevertheless, I was in England, and he was 
making Christmas preparations of one kind or another, 
and my mind had a perfect right to ramble a little. I 
think most of all I anticipated another kind of toy from 
that to which we are accustomed in America. 

So many things go to make up that very amiable feast 
of Christmas when it is successful that I can hardly think 
now of all that contributed to this one. There was Sir 
Scorp, of whom by now I had grown very fond, and 
who was coming here to spend the holidays. There was 
Gerard Barfleur, a cousin of Barfleur's, a jolly, royster- 
ing theatrical manager, who w^as unquestionably — after 
Barfleur — one of the most pleasing figures I met in 
England, a whimsical, comic-ballad-singing, character- 
loving soul, who was as great a favorite with women and 
children as one would want to find. He knew all sorts 
of ladies, apparently, of high and low degree, rich and 
poor, beautiful and otherwise, and seemed kindly dis- 
posed toward them all. I could write a splendid human- 
interest sketch of Gerard Barfleur alone. There was 
Mr. T. McT., a pale, thoughtful person, artistic and 
poetic to his finger tips, curator of one of the famous 
museums, a lover of Mr. Housman's " A Shropshire 
Lad," a lover of ancient glass and silver, whose hair 
hung in a sweet mop over his high, pale forehead, and 
whose limpid dark eyes shone with a kindly, artistic light. 
Then there was Barfleur's aunt and her daughter, mother 
and sister respectively of the highly joyous Gerard Bar- 
fleur, and wife and daughter of a famous litterateur. 
Then, to cap it all, were the total of Barfleur's very inter- 
esting household, — housekeeper, governess, maid, cook, 
gardener, and — last, but not least, the four charming, I 
might almost say adorable, children. 

There, too, was Barfleur, a host in himself. For 
weeks beforehand he kept saying on occasion as we wan- 



I50 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

dered about London together, " No, we can't go there," 
or, " You must n't accept that, because we have reserved 
that Saturday and Sunday for Christmas at my place," 
and so nothing was done which might interfere. Being 
in his hands I finally consulted him completely as to 
Christmas presents, and found that I was to be limited 
to very small gifts, mere tokens of good-will, I being his 
guest. I did manage to get him a supply of his favorite 
cigarettes, however, unknown to himself, — the ones his 
clever secretary told me he much preferred, — and had 
them sent out to the house with some favorite books for 
the remaining members of the household. 

But the man was in such high spirits over the whole 
program he had laid out for me — winter and spring, — 
the thought of Paris and the Riviera, — that he was quite 
beside himself. More than once he said to me, beaming 
through his monocle, " We shall have a delightful time on 
the continent soon. I 'm looking forward to it, and to 
your first impressions." Every evening he wanted to 
take my hastily scribbled notes and read them, and after 
doing so was anxious to have me do them all just that 
way, that is, day by day as I experienced them. I found 
that quite impossible, however. Once he wanted to 
know if I had any special preference in wines or cordials 
and I knew very well why he asked. Another time he 
overheard me make the statement that I had always 
longed to eat rich, odorous Limburger cheese from Ger- 
many. 

" Done ! " he exclaimed. " We shall have it for Christ- 
mas." 

" But, Papa," piped up Berenice maliciously, " we don't 
all have to have it at the same time, do we ? " 

" No, my dear," replied Barfleur solemnly, with that 
amazingly patronizing and parental air which always con- 
vulsed me, a sort of gay deviltry always lurking behind it. 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 151 

*' Only Mr. Dreiser need have it. He is German and 
likes it." 

I assumed as German a look as I might, — profound, 
Limburgery. 

" And I believe you like Mr. Jones's sausage," he ob- 
served on another occasion, referring to an American 
commodity, which he had heard me say in New York 
that I liked. " We shall have some of those." 

" Are American sausage like English sausage ? " in- 
quired young Charles Gerald interestedly. 

" Now Heaven only knows," I replied. *' I have never 
eaten English sausages. Ask your father." 

Barfleur merely smiled. " I think not," he replied. 

" Christmas is certainly looking up," I said to him 
badgeringly. "HI come out of here alive, — in condi- 
tion for Paris and the Riviera, — I shall be grateful." 

He beamed on me reprovingly. 

Well, finally, to make a long story short, the day came, 
or, at least, the day before. We were all assembled for 
a joyous Christmas Eve — T. McT., Sir Scorp, Gerard 
Barfleur, the dearest aunt and the charming cousin, ex- 
tremely intelligent and artistic women both, the four chil- 
dren, Barfleur's very clever and appealing secretary, and 
myself. There was a delightful dinner spread at seven- 
thirty, when we all assembled to discuss the prospects of 
the morrow. It was on the program, as I discovered, 
that I should arise, and accompany Barfleur, his aunt, his 
cousin, and the children to a nearby abbey church, a lovely 
afifair, I was told, on the bank of the Thames hard by the 
old English town called Bridgely, while Gerard Barfleur, 
who positively refused to have anything to do with relig- 
ion of any kind, quality or description, was to go and re- 
connoiter a certain neighboring household (of which more 
anon), and to take young James Herbert (he of the 
" bawth ") for a fine and long-anticipated ride on his mo- 



152 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

tor cycle. Lord Scorp and T. McT. were to remain be- 
hind to discuss art, perhaps, or Hterature, being late risers. 
If there was to be any Santa Claus, which the children 
doubted, owing to Barfleur's rather grave asseveration to 
the contrary (there having been a number of reasons why 
a severely righteous Santa might see fit to remain away), 
he was not to make his appearance until rather late in 
the afternoon. Meanwhile we had all adjourned to the 
general living-room, where a heavy coal fire blazed on 
the hearth (for once), and candles were lighted in pro- 
fusion. The children sang songs of the north, accom- 
panied by their governess. I can see their quaint faces 
now, gathered about the piano. Lord Scorp, McT. and 
myself indulged in various artistic discussions and badi- 
nage ; Mrs. Barfleur, the aunt, told me the brilliant story 
of her husband's hfe, — a great naturalistic philosopher 
and novelist, — and finally after coffee, sherry, nuts and 
much music and songs, — some comic ones by Gerard 
Barfleur, — we retired for the night. 

It is necessary, to prepare the reader properly for the 
morrow, to go back a few days or weeks, possibly, and 
tell of a sentimental encounter that befell me one day 
as I was going for a walk in that green world which en- 
compassed Bridgely Level. It was a most delightful 
spectacle. Along the yellowish road before me, with its 
border of green grass and green though leafless trees, there 
was approaching a most interesting figure of a woman, a 
chic, dashing bit of femininity, — at once (the presump- 
tion, owing to various accompanying details was mine) 
wife, mother, chatelaine, — as charming a bit of woman- 
hood and English family sweetness as I had yet seen in 
England. English women, by and large, let me state 
here, are not smart, at least those that I encountered ; but 
here was one dressed after the French fashion in trig, 
close-fitting blue, outlining her form perfectly, a little 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 153 

ermine cap of snowy whiteness set jauntily over her ear, 
her smooth black hair parted demurely over her forehead, 
a white muflf warming her hands, and white spats em- 
phasizing the trim leather of her foot gear. Her eyes 
were dark brown, her cheeks rosy, her gait smart and 
tense. I could scarcely believe she was English, the 
mother of the three-year-old in white and red wool, a lit- 
tle girl, who was sitting astride a white donkey, which, 
in turn, was led by a trim maid or nurse or governess in 
somber brown, — but it was quite plain that she was. 
There was such a wise, sober look about all this smart- 
ness, such a taut, buttressed conservatism, that I was en- 
chanted. It was such a delightful picture to encounter 
of a clear December morning that, in the fashion of the 
English, I exclaimed, " My word ! This is something 
like!" 

I went back to the house that afternoon determined 
to make inquiries. Perhaps she was a neighbor, — a 
friend of the family ! 

Of all the individuals who have an appropriate and 
superior taste for the smart efforts of the fair sex, com- 
mend me to Barfleur. His interest and enthusiasm 
neither flags nor fails. Being a widower of discretion 
he knows exactly what is smart for a woman as well as 
a man, and all you have to do to make him prick up his 
ears attentively is to mention trig beauty as existing in 
some form, somewhere, — not too distant for his adven- 
turing. 

" What's this? " I can see his eye lighting. " Beauty? 
A lovely woman ? When ? Where ? " 

This day, finding Wilkins in the garden trimming some 
bushes, I had said, " Wilkins, do you know any family 
hereabouts that keeps a white donkey? " 

Wilkins paused and scratched his ear reflectively. 
" No, sir ! I cawn't say has I do, sir. I might harsk, sir. 



154 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

down in the village, hif you 're very hanxious to know." 

Be it known by all men that I feed Wilkins amply for 
all services performed, — hence his interest. 

" Never mind for the present, Wilkins," I replied. " I 
may want to know. If so, I '11 ask you." 

I knew he would inquire anyhow. 

That night at dinner, the family being all present, Bar- 
fleur in his chair at the head of the table, the wine at his 
right, I said mildly — 

" I saw the most beautiful woman to-day I have yet 
seen in England." 

Barfleur was just in the act of elevating a glass of 
champagne to his lips, but he paused to fix me with an 
inquiring eye. 

" Where ? " he questioned solemnly. " Were you in 
the city ? " 

" Not at all. I rarely, if ever, see them in the city. 
It was very near here. A most beautiful woman, — very 
French, — trim figure, small feet, a gay air. She had a 
lovely three-year-old child with her riding a white 
donkey." 

" A white donkey ? Trim, very French, you say ? 
This is most interesting! I don't recall any one about 
here who keeps a white donkey. Berenice," he turned 
to his young daughter. " Do you recall any one here- 
about who keeps a white donkey? " 

Berenice, a wizard of the future, merely smiled wisely. 

" I do not. Papa." 

" This is very curious, very curious indeed," continued 
Barfleur, returning to me. " For the life of me, I can- 
not think of any one who keeps a white donkey. Who 
can she be ? Walking very near here, you say ? I shall 
have a look into this. ' She may be the holiday guest of 
some family. But the donkey and child and maid — 
Young, you say? Percy, you don't remember whether 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 155 

any one hereabout owns a white donkey, — any one with 
a maid and a three-year-old child ? " 

Percy smiled broadly. " No, I don't," he said. Bar- 
fleur shook his head in mock perturbation. " It 's very 
strange," he said. " I don't like the thought of there 
being any really striking women hereabout of whom I 
know nothing." He drank his wine. 

There was no more of this then, but I knew that in all 
probability the subject would come up again. Barfleur 
inquired, and Wilkins inquired, and as was natural, the 
lady was located. She turned out to be the wife of a 
tennis, golf, and aeroplane expert or champion, a man who 
held records for fast automobiling and the like, and who 
was independently settled in the matter of means. Mrs. 
Barton Churchill was her name as I recall. It also turned 
out most unfortunately that Barfleur did not know her, 
and could not place any one who did. 

" This is all very trying," he said when he discovered 
this much. " Here you are, a celebrated American 
author, admiring a very attractive woman whom you 
meet on the public highway; and here am I, a resident of 
the neighborhood in which she is Hving, and I do not 
even know her. If I did, it would all be very simple. 
I could take you over, she would be immensely flattered 
at the nice things you have said about her. She would 
be grateful to me for bringing you. Presto, — we should 
be fast friends." 

" Exactly," I replied sourly. " You and she would 
be fast friends. After I am gone in a few days all will 
be lovely. I shall not be here to protect my interests. 
It is always the way. I am the cat's paw, the bait, the 
trap. I won't stand for it. I saw her first, and she is 
mine." 

" My dear fellow," he exclaimed banteringly, " how 
you go on ! I don't understand you at all. This is Eng- 



156 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

land. The lady is married. A little neighborly friend- 
ship. Hmm." 

" Yes, yes," I replied. " I know all about the 
neighborly friendship. You get me an introduction to 
the lady and I shall speak for myself." 

" As for that matter," he added thoughtfully, " it 
would not be inappropriate under the circumstances for 
me to introduce myself in your behalf. She would be 
pleased, I 'm sure. You are a writer, you admire her. 
Why shouldn't she be pleased?" 

" Curses ! " I exclaimed. " Always in the way. Al- 
ways stepping in just when I fancy I have found some- 
thing for myself." 

But nothing was done until Gerard Barfleur arrived 
a day or two before Christmas. That worthy had 
traveled all over England with various theatrical com- 
panies. Being the son of an eminent literary man 
he had been received in all circles, and knew com- 
fortable and interesting people in every walk of life 
apparently, everywhere. Barfleur, who, at times, I think, 
resented his social sufficiency, was nevertheless prone to 
call on him on occasion for advice. On this occasion, 
since Gerard knew this neighborhood almost as well as 
his cousin, he consulted him as to our lady of the donkey. 

"Mrs. Churchill? Mrs. Barton Churchill?" I can 
still see his interested look. " Why, it seems to me that 
I do know some one of that name. If I am not mistaken 
I know her husband's brother, Harris Churchill, up in 
Liverpool. He 's connected with a bank up there. 
We 've motored all over England together, pretty nearly. 
I '11 stop in Christmas morning and see if it is n't the 
same family. The description you give suits the lady 
I know almost exactly." 

I was all agog. The picture she had presented was 
so smart. Barfleur was interested though perhaps dis- 




fv.^/^/eL 



Barfleur 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 157 

appointed, too, that Gerard knew her when he did n't. 

" This is most fortunate," he said to me solemnly. 
" Now if it should turn out that he does know her, we 
can call there Christmas day after dinner. Or perhaps 
he will take you." 

This came a little regretfully, I think, for Gerard Bar- 
fleur accounted himself an equal master with his cousin 
in the matter of the ladies, and was not to be easily set 
aside. So Christmas eve it was decided that Gerard 
should, on the morrow, reconnoiter the Churchill country 
house early, and report progress, while we went to 
church. Fancy Barfleur and me marching to church 
Christmas morning with the children ! 

Christmas in England ! The day broke clear and 
bright, and there we all were. It was not cold, and as 
is usual, there was little if any wind. I remember look- 
ing out of my window down into the valley toward 
Bridgely, and admiring the green rime upon the trees, 
the clustered chimneys of a group of farmers' and work- 
ing-men's cottages, the lov/ sagging roofs of red tile or 
thatch, and the small window panes that always somehow 
suggest a homey simplicity that I can scarcely resist. 
The English milkmaid of fiction, the simple cottages, 
the ordered hierarchy of farmers are, willy nilly, fix- 
tures in my mind. I cannot get them out. 

First then, came a breakfast in our best bibs and tuck- 
ers, for were we not to depart immediately afterwards to 
hear an English Christmas service? Imagine Barfleur — 
the pride of Piccadilly, — marching solemnly off at the 
head of his family to an old, gray abbey church. As 
the French say, " I smile." We all sat around and had 
our heavy English breakfast, — tea, and, to my comfort 
and delight, " Mr. Jones's sausages." Barfleur had se- 
cured a string of them from somewhere. 

" Think of it," commented Berenice sardonically. 



158 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" ' Mr. Jones's sausages ' for breakfast. Are n't they 
comic! Do you like them?" 

" I most assuredly do." 

" And do you eat them every day in A-may-reeka ? " 
queried Charles Gerard with a touch of latent jesting 
in his voice. 

" When I can afford them, yes." 

" They 're quite small, are n't they? " commented five- 
year-old James Herbert. 

" Precisely," I replied, unabashed by this fire of in- 
quiry. " That 's their charm." 

The church that we visited was one of those semi- 
ancient abbey affairs, done in good English Gothic, with 
a touch of Tudor here and there, and was located outside 
the village of Bridgely Level two or three miles from 
Barfleur's home. I recall with simple pleasure the smug, 
self-righteous, Sunday-go-to-meeting air with which we 
all set forth, crossing homey fields via diagonal paths, 
passing through stiles and along streams and country 
roads, by demure little cottages that left one breathless 
with delight. I wish truly that England could be put 
under glass and retained as a perfect specimen of uncon- 
scious, rural poetry — the south of England. The pots 
and pans outside the kitchen doorways ! The simple 
stoop, ornamented with clambering vines ! The reddish- 
green sagging roofs with their clustered cylindrical chim- 
neypots! When we came to the top of a hill we could 
see the church in the valley below, nestling beside one 
bank of the Thames which wound here and there in 
delightful S's. A square tower, as I recall, rose quaintly 
out of a surrounding square of trees, grass, grave-stones 
and box-hedge. 

There was much ado in this semi-ancient place as we 
came up, for Christmas day, of all days, naturally drew 
forth a history-loving English audience. Choir boys 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 159 

were scurrying here and there, some ladies of solemn 
demeanor, who looked as if they might be assisting at 
the service in some way or another, were dawdling about, 
and I even saw the rector in full canonicals hastening up 
a gravel path toward a side door, as though matters 
needed to be expedited considerably. The interior was 
dark, heavy-beamed, and by no means richly ornamented 
with stained glass, but redolent of by-gone generations 
at that. The walls were studded with those customary 
slabs and memorial carvings with which the English love 
to ornament their church interiors. A fair-sized, and yet 
for so large an edifice, meager audience was present, an 
evidence it seemed to me, of the validity of the protest 
against state support for the Established Church. There 
was a great storm of protest in England at this time 
against the further state support of an institution that 
was not answering the religious needs of the people, and 
there had been some discussion of the matter at Barfleur's 
house. As was natural, the artistically inclined were in 
favor of anything which would sustain, unimpaired, 
whether they had religious value or not, all the old 
cathedrals, abbeys, and neighborhood churches, solely 
because of their poetic appearance. On the other hand 
an immense class, derisively spoken of as " chapel people," 
were heartily in favor of the ruder disposition of the 
matter. Barfleur in his best Piccadilly clothing was for 
their maintenance. 

To be frank, as charming as was this semi-ancient at- 
mosphere, and possibly suited to the current English 
neighborhood mood (I could not say as to that), it did 
not appeal to me as strongly on this occasion as did 
many a similar service in American churches of 
the same size. The vestments were pleasing as high 
church vestments go; the choir, made of boys and men 
from the surrounding countryside no doubt, was not 



i6o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

absolutely villainous but it could have been much better. 
To tell the truth, it seemed to me that I was witnessing 
the last and rather threadbare evidences of an older and 
much more prosperous order of things. Beautiful in 
its way? Yes. Quaint? Yes. But smacking more 
of poverty and an ordered system continued past its 
day than anything else, I felt a little sorry for the 
old church and the thin rector and the goodly citizens, 
albeit a little provincial, who clung so fatuously to a 
time-worn form. They have their place, nO' doubt, and 
it makes that sweet, old lavender atmosphere which 
seems to hover over so much that one encounters in 
England. Nevertheless life does move on, and we must 
say good-bye to many a once delightful thing. Why not 
set these old churches aside as museums or art galleries, 
or for any other public use, as they do with many of them 
in Italy, and let the matter go at that ? It is not necessary 
that a service be kept up in them day by day and year 
by year. Services on special or state occasions would 
be sufficient. Let by-gones be by-gones, and let the peo- 
ple tax themselves for things they really do want, skat- 
ing-rinks, perhaps, and moving pictures. They seemed 
to flourish even in these elderly and more sedate neighbor- 
hoods. 

Outside in the graveyard, after the services were over 
and we were idling about a few moments, I found a 
number of touches of that valiant simplicity in ability 
which is such a splendid characteristic of the English. 
Although there were many graves here of the nobility and 
gentry, dating from as far back as the sixteenth century, 
there was no least indication so far as I could see, of 
ostentation, but everywhere simple headstones recording 
names only, and not virtues, — sometimes, perhaps, a 
stately verse or a stoic line. I noticed with a kind of 
English-speaking pride the narrow new-made grave of 



A CHRISTMAS CALL i6i 

Sir Robert Hart, the late great English financial adminis- 
trator of China, who, recently deceased, had been brought 
over sea to this simple churchyard, to lie here with other 
members of his family in what I assumed to be the 
neighborhood of his youth and nativity. It is rather 
fine, I think, when a nation's sons go forth over the world 
to render honorable service, each after his capacity, and 
then come back in death to an ancient and beloved soil. 
The very obscurity of this little grave with its two-feet, 
six-inch headstone and flowerless mound spoke more to 
me of the dignity and ability that is in true greatness of 
soul than a soaring shaft might otherwise do. 

On the way home I remember we discussed Christian 
Science and its metaphysical merit in a world where all 
creeds and all doctrines blow, apparently, so aimlessly 
about. Like all sojourners in this fitful fever of exist- 
ence Mrs. Barfleur and her daughter and her son, the 
cheerful Gerard were not without their troubles; so 
much so that, intelligent woman that she was, and quite 
aware of the subtleties and uncertainties of religious 
dogma, she was eager to find something upon which she 
could lean, — spiritually speaking, — the strong arm, let 
us say, of an All Mighty, no less, who would perchance 
heal her of her griefs and ills. I take it, as I look at 
life, that only the very able intellectually, or the very 
rock-ribbed and dull materially can front the storms and 
disasters that beset us, or the ultimate dark which only 
the gifted, the imaginative, see, without quakes and 
fears. So often have I noticed this to be true, that those 
who stand up brave and strong in their youth turn a 
nervous and anguished eye upon this troubled seeming 
in later years. They have no longer any heart for a battle 
that is only rhyme and no reason, and, whether they can 
conceive why or not, they must have a god. I, for one, 
would be the last person in the world to deny that every- 



1 62 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

where I find boundless evidence of an intelligence or in- 
telligences far superior to my own. I, for one, am in- 
clined to agree with the poet that " if my barque sink, 
'tis to another sea." In fact I have always innately pre- 
sumed the existence of a force or forces that, possibly 
ordered in some noble way, maintain a mathematical, 
chemical, and mechanical parity and order in visible 
things. I have always felt, in spite of all my carpings, 
that somehow in a large way there is a rude justice done 
under the sun, and that a balance for, I will not say 
right, but for happiness is maintained. The world has 
long since gathered to itself a vast basket of names such 
as Right, Justice, Mercy, and Truth. My thinking has 
nothing to do with these. I do not believe that we can 
conceive what the ultimate significance of anything is, 
therefore why label it? I have seen good come to the 
seemingly evil and evil come to the seemingly good. 
But if a religion will do anybody any good, for Heaven's 
sake, let him have it! To me it is a case of individual, 
sometimes of race weakness. A stronger mind could not 
attempt to define what may not be defined, nor to lean 
upon what, to infinite mind must be utterly insubstantial 
and thin air. Obviously there is a vast sea of force. Is 
it good? Is it evil? Give that to the philosophers to 
fight over, and to the fearful and timid give a religion. 
" A mighty fortress is our God," sang Luther. He may 
be, I do not know. 

But to return to Mrs. Barfleur and her daughter and 
Barfleur's children and Barfleur ambling across the sunny 
English landscape this Christmas morning. It was a 
fine thing to see the green patina of the trees, and richer 
green grass growing lush and thick all winter long, and 
to see the roofs of little towns like Bridgely Level, — for 
we were walking on high ground, — and the silvery wind- 
ings of the Thames in the valley below, whence we had 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 163 

just come. I think I established the metaphysical basis 
of life quite ably, — for myself, — and urged Mrs. Bar- 
fleur to take up Christian Science. I assailed the wisdom 
of maintaining by state funds the Established Church 
largely, I think, to irritate Barfleur, and protested that 
the chapel people had a great deal of wisdom on their 
side. As we drew near Bridgely Level and Barfleur's 
country place it occurred to me that Gerard Barfleur had 
gone to find out if he really knew the lady of the donkey, 
and I was all anxiety to find out. Barfleur himself was 
perking up considerably, and it was agreed that first we 
would have an early afternoon feast, all the Christmas 
dainties of the day, and then, if Gerard really knew the 
lady, we were to visit her and then return to the house, 
where, I now learned, there was to be a Santa Glaus. He 
was to arrive via the courtesy of Gerard Barfleur who 
was to impersonate him, and on that account, Barfleur 
announced, we might have to cut any impending visit 
to our lady short in order not to disappoint the children, 
but visit we would. Knowing Gerard Barfleur to be a 
good actor and intensely fond of children, — Barfleur's 
especially, — I anticipated some pleasure here. But I 
will be honest, the great event of the day was our lady of 
the donkey, her white furs, and whether she was really 
as striking as I had imagined. I was afraid Gerard 
would return to report that either, (A) — he did not 
know her, or (B) — that she was not so fascinating as 
I thought. In either case my anticipated pleasure would 
come to the ground with a crash. We entered, shall I 
say, with beating hearts. 

Gerard had returned. With Sir Scorp and T. McT. 
he was now toasting his English legs in front of the 
fire, and discoursing upon some vanity of the day. At 
sight of the children he began his customary badinage 
but I would have none of it. Barfleur fixed him with 



i64 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

a monitory eye. " Well," he said, putting the burden of 
the inquiry on me. " Our friend here has been quite 
restless during the services this morning. What did you 
find out?" 

" Yes," chimed in Mrs. Barfleur who had been informed 
as to this romantic encounter, *' for goodness' sake tell us. 
We are all dying to know." 

" Yes, tell them," sarcastically interpolated Lord 
Scorp. " There will be no peace, believe me, until you 
do." 

" To be sure, to be sure," cheerfully exclaimed Gerard, 
straightening up from jouncing James Herbert. " I 
know her well. Her sister and her husband are here 
with her. That little baby is hers, of course. They 
live just over the hill here. I admire your taste. She 
is one of the smartest women I know. I told her that 
you were stopping here and she wants you to come over 
and see the Christmas tree lighted. We are all invited 
after dinner." 

" Very good," observed Barfleur, rubbing his hands. 
" Now that is settled." 

" Is n't she charming," observed Mrs. G. A. Barfleur, 
" to be so poHtely disposed ? " 

Thereafter the dinner could not come too soon, and by 
two-thirty we were ready to depart, having consumed 
Heaven knows how many kinds of wines and meats, 
English plum-pudding, and — especially for me — real 
German Limburger. It was a splendid dinner. 

Shall I stop to describe it? I cannot say, outside of 
the interesting English company, that it was any better 
or any worse than many another Christmas feast in which 
I have participated. Imagine the English dining-room, 
the English maid, the housekeeper in watchful attend- 
ance on the children, the maid, like a bit of Dresden 
china, on guard over the service, Barfleur, monocle in 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 165 

eye, sitting solemnly in state at the head of the board, 
Lord Scorp, T. McT., Gerard Barfleur, his mother, her 
daughter, myself, the children all chattering and gobbling. 
The high-sounding English voices, the balanced English 
phrases, the quaint English scene through the windows, — 
it all comes back, a bit of sweet color. Was I happy? 
Very. Did I enjoy myself? Quite. But as to this 
other matter. 

It was a splendid afternoon. On the way over, Bar- 
fleur and myself, the others refusing contemptuously to 
have anything to do with this sentimental affair, had the 
full story of our lady of the donkey and her sister and the 
two brothers that they married. 

We turned eventually into one of those charming lawns 
enclosed by a high, concealing English fence, and up a 
graveled automobile path to a snow-white Georgian door. 
We were admitted to a hall that at once bore out the 
testimony as to the athletic prowess of the husbands 
twain. There were guns, knives, golf-sticks, tennis 
rackets, automobile togs and swords. I think there were 
deer and fox heads in the bargain. By a ruddy, sports- 
manlike man of perhaps thirty-eight, and all of six feet 
tall, who now appeared, we were invited to enter, make 
ourselves at home, drink what we would, whiskey, sherry, 
ale — a suitable list. We declined the drink, putting up 
fur coats and sticks and were immediately asked into the 
billiard room where the Christmas tree and other festivi- 
ties were holding, — or about to be. Here, at last there 
were my lady of the donkey and the child and the maid 
and my lady's sister and alas, my lady's husband, full six 
feet tall and vigorous and, of all tragic things, fingering a 
forty-caliber, sixteen-shot magazine pistol which his be- 
loved brother of sporting proclivities had given him as a 
Christmas present ! I eyed it as one might a special 
dispensation of Providence, 



i66 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

But our lady of the donkey ? A very charming woman 
she proved, inteUigent, smiHng, very chic, quite aware of 
all the nice things that had been said about her, very 
clever in making light of it for propriety's sake, unwilling 
to have anything made of it for the present for her hus- 
band's sake. But that Anglicized French air ! And that 
romantic smile! 

We talked — of what do people talk on such occasions ? 
Gerard was full of the gayest references to the fact that 
Barfleur had such interesting neighbors as the Churchills 
and did not know it, and that they had once motored to 
Blackpool together. I shall not forget either how artfully 
Barfleur conveyed to Mrs. Barton Churchill, our lady 
of the donkey, that I had been intensely taken with her 
looks while at the same time presenting himself in the 
best possible light. Barfleur is always at his best on 
such occasions, Chesterfieldian, and with an air that says, 
" A mere protegee of mine. Do not forget the man- 
agerial skill that is making this interesting encounter pos- 
sible." But Mrs. Churchill, as I could see, was not 
utterly unmindful of the fact that I was the one that nad 
been heralded to her as a writer, and that I had made the 
great fuss and said all the nice things about her after a 
single encounter on a country road .which had brought 
about this afternoon visit She was gracious, and ordered 
the Christmas tree lighted and had the young heir's most 
interesting toys spread out on the billiard table. I re- 
member picking up a linen story book, labeled Loughlin 
Bros., New York. 

" From America," I said, quite unwisely I think. 

" Oh, yes, you Americans," she replied, eyeing me 
archly. " Everything comes from America these days, 
even our toys. But it 's rather ungracious tO' make us 
admit it, don't you think? " 

I picked up a train of cars, and, to my astonishment, 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 167 

found it stamped with the name of a Connecticut firm. 
I hesitated to say more, for I knew that I was on danger- 
ous ground, but after that I looked at every book or box 
of blocks and the like, to find that my suspicions were well 
founded. England gets many of its Christmas toys from 
America. 

Nothing came of this episode except a pleasant intro- 
duction for Barfleur, who had all the future before him. 
I was leaving for Manchester after the new year, and for 
Paris a week or two later. It was all in vain as I fore- 
saw, that I was invited to call again, or that she hoped 
to see something of me among her friends in London. 
I think I said as much to Barfleur with many unkind re- 
marks about the type of mind that manages to secure 
all merely by a process of waiting. Meantime he walked 
bravely forward, his overcoat snugly buttoned, his cane 
executing an idle circle, his monocle on straight, his nose 
in the air. I could have made away with him for much 
less. 

The last of this very gallant day came in the home of 
Barfleur himself. As we neared the house we decided 
to hurry forward and to say that Gerard had remained at 
the Churchill's for dinner, while he made a wide detour, 
ending up, I think, in some chamber in the coach house. 
I did not see him again until much later in the evening, 
but meantime the children, the relatives, the friends and 
the family servants were all gathered in the nursery on the 
second floor. There was much palaver and badinage 
concerning the fact that Santa Claus had really had such 
bad reports that he had found it much against his will 
to come here, early at least. There were some rather en- 
couraging things that had been reported to him later. 
However, and he had, so some one had heard, changed his 
mind. Whether there would be little or much for such 
a collection of ne'er-do-wells was open to question. 



i68 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

However if we were all very quiet for a while we should 
see. I can see Barfleur now in his gala attire, stalk- 
ing nobly about, and the four little Barfleurs survey- 
ing rather incredulously but expectantly the maid, the 
nurse, the governess, and their father. I wondered 
what had become of my small mementos and whether my 
special cigarettes for Barfleur were in safety in Santa 
Claus's pack. It was small stock, I fear me much, that 
these well-behaved little English children took in this 
make-believe, but presently there was a loud hammering 
at the nursery door, and without a " By your leave," the 
same was opened and a vigorous, woolly-headed Santa 
Claus put his rosy face intO' the chamber. 

" Is there any one living here by the name of Percy 
Franklin Barfleur, or Berenice Barfleur, or James Herbert 
Barfleur?" I shall not repeat all the names he called in 
a high falsetto voice, " I 've been a long way to-day and 
I 've had a great deal to do, and I have n't had the least 
assistance from anybody. They 're so busy having a 
good time themselves." 

I never saw a redder nose, or more shaggy eye-browed 
eyes, or a gayer twinkle in them. And the pack that 
he carried was simply enormous. It could barely be 
squeezed through the door. As he made his way to the 
center of the room he looked quizzically about, groaning 
and squeaking in his funny voice, and wanting to know 
if the man in the monocle were really Barfleur, and 
whether the fat lady in the corner were really a nurse, or 
merely an interloper, and if the four children that had 
been reported to him as present were surely there. Hav- 
ing satisfied himself on various counts, and evoked a 
great deal of innocent laughter, to say nothing of awe 
as to his next probable comment, he finally untied the 
enormous bag and began to consult the labels. 

" Here 's a package marked * Charles Gerard Barfleur.' 



A CHRISTMAS CALL 169 

It 's rather large. It 's been very heavy to carry all this 
distance. Can anybody tell me whether he 's been a 
reasonably good child ? It 's very hard to go to all this 
trouble, if children are n't really deserving." Then, as 
he came forward, he added, " He has a very impish look 
in his eye, but I suppose I ought to let him have it." 
And so the gift was handed over. 

One by one the presents came forth, commented on in 
this fashion, only the comments varied with the age and 
the personality of the recipient. There was no lack of 
humor or intimacy of application, for this Santa Claus 
apparently knew whereof he spoke. 

" Is there a writer in the room by the name of Theo- 
dore Dreiser ? " he remarked at one time sardonically, 
" I 've heard of him faintly and he is n't a very good 
writer, but I suppose he 's entitled to a slight remembr- 
ance. I hope you reform, Mr. Dreiser," he remarked 
very wisely, as he drew near me. " It 's very plain to 
me that a little improvement could be effected." 

I acknowledged the wisdom of the comment. 

When my cigarettes were handed to Barfleur, Santa 
Claus tapped them sapiently. " More wretched ciga- 
rettes ! " he remarked in his high falsetto. " I know them 
well! If it isn't one vice that has to be pampered, it's 
another. I would have brought him pate de f oies gras or 
wine, if I did n't think this was less harmful. He 's very 
fond of prawns too, but they 're very expensive at this 
time of the year. A little economy would n't hurt him." 
Dora, the maid, and Mrs. A., the nurse, and Miss C, the 
governess, came in for really brilliant compliments. Lord 
Scorp was told that an old English castle or a Rembrandt 
would be most suitable, but that Santa was all out at 
present, and if he would just be a little more cheerful in 
the future he might manage to get him one. T. McT. 
was given books, as very fitting, and in a trice the place 



170 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

was literally littered with wonders. There were immense 
baskets and boxes of candied fruit from Holland; toys, 
books and fruit from Barfleur's mother in Rome; more 
toys and useful presents from ladies in London and the 
north of England and France and the Isle of Wight, — 
a goodly company of mementos. It 's something to be 
an attractive widower ! I never saw children more hand- 
somely or bountifully provided for — a new saddle, bridle 
and whip for Berenice's riding pony, curious puzzles, Ger- 
man mechanical toys from Berlin, and certain ornamental 
articles of dress seemed, by the astonishing bursts of ex- 
citement they provoked, exceedingly v/elcome. Santa 
now drew off his whiskers and cap to reveal himself as 
Gerard Barfleur, and we all literally got down on the 
floor to play with the children. You can imagine, with 
each particular present to examine, how much there was 
to do. Tea-time came and went unnoticed, a stated oc- 
casion in England. Supper, a meal not offered except 
on Christmas, was spread about eight o'clock. About 
nine an automobile took Lord Scorp and T. McT. away, 
and after that we all returned to the nursery until about 
ten-thirty when even by the most liberal interpretation 
of holiday license it was bedtime. We soberer elders 
(I hope no one sets up a loud guffaw) adjourned to the 
drawing-room for nuts and wine, and finally, as the be- 
loved Pepys was accustomed to remark, " So to bed." 

But what with the abbey church, the discourse on 
Christian Science, our lady of the donkey, a very full 
stomach and a phantasmagoria of toys spinning before 
my eyes, I went to bed thinking of, — well now, what do 
you suppose I went to bed thinking of? 



CHAPTER XVII 

SMOKY ENGLAND 

FOR years before going to England I had been in- 
terested in the north of England — the land, as 
I was accustomed to think, of the under dog. 
England, if one could trust one's impression from a dis- 
tance, was a land of great social contrasts — the ultimate 
high and the ultimate low of poverty and wealth. In 
the north, as I understand it, were all of the great 
manufacturing centers — Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, 
Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester — a whole welter 
of smoky cities whence issue tons upon tons of pottery, 
linen, cotton, cutlery. While I was at Bridgely Level 
I spoke of my interest in this region to Barfleur, who 
merely lifted his eyebrows. He knew little or nothing 
about that northern world. The south of England en- 
compassed his interest. However, Barfieur's cousin, the 
agreeable Gerard Barfleur, told me soul fully that the 
north of England must be like America, because it was 
so brisk, direct, practical, and that he loved it. (He 
was a confirmed American " rooter " or " booster," we 
would say over here, and was constantly talking about 
coming to this country to enter the theatrical business.) 

I journeyed northward the last day of the old year to 
Manchester and its environs, which I had chosen as 
affording the best picture of manufacturing life. I 
had been directed to a certain hotel, recommended as 
the best equipped in the country. I think I never saw 
so large a hotel. It sprawled over a very large block in 
a heavy, impressive, smoky-stone way. It had, as I 
quickly discovered, an excellent Turkish and Russian bath 

171 



172 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

in connection with it and five separate restaurants, Ger- 
man, French, Enghsh, etc., and an American bar. The 
most important travel life of Manchester centered here 
— that was obvious. I was told that buyers and sellers 
from all parts of the world congregated in this particular 
caravanserai. It was New Year's day and the streets 
were comparatively empty, but the large, showy, heavily 
furnished breakfast-room was fairly well sprinkled with 
men whom I took to be cotton operatives. There was 
a great mill strike on at this time and here were gathered 
for conference representatives of all the principal inter- 
ests involved. I was glad to see this, for I had always 
wondered what type of man it was that conducted the 
great manufacturing interests in England — particularly 
this one of cotton. The struggle was over the matter 
of the recognition of the unions and a slight raise in the 
wage-scale. These men were very much like a similar 
collection of wealthy manufacturers in the United States. 
Great industries seem to breed a certain type of mind and 
body. You can draw a mental picture of a certain keen, 
dressy, phlegmatic individual, not tall, not small, round, 
solid, ruddy — and have them all. These men .were so 
comfortably solid, physically. They looked so content 
with themselves and the world, so firm and sure. Nearly 
all of them were between forty-five and sixty, cold, hard, 
quick-minded, alert. They differed radically from the 
typical Englishman of the South. It struck me at once 
that if England were to be kept commercially dominant 
it would be this type of man, not that of the South, who 
would keep it so. 

And now I could understand from looking at these 
men why it was that the north of England was supposed 
to hate the south of England, and vice versa. I had 
sat at a dinner-table in Portland Place one evening and 
heard the question of the sectional feeling discussed. 



SMOKY ENGLAND 173 

Why does it exist? was the question before the guests. 
Well, the south of England is intellectual, academic, his- 
toric, highly socialized. It is rich in military, govern- 
mental, ambassadorial and titled life. The very scenery 
is far more lovely. The culture of the people, because 
of the more generally distributed wealth, is so much bet- 
ter. In the north of England the poor are very poor 
and contentious. The men of wealth are not historically 
wealthy or titled. In many cases they are " hard greedy 
upstarts like the irrepressible Americans," one speaker 
remarked. They have no real culture or refinement. 
They manage to buy their way in from time to time, 
it is true, but that does not really count. They are es- 
sentially raw and brutal. Looking at these men break- 
fasting quietly, I could understand it exactly. Their 
hard, direct efficiency would but poorly adjust itself to the 
soft speculative intellectuality of the south. Yet we 
know that types go hand in hand in any country with a 
claim to greatness. 

After my breakfast I struck out to see what I could see 
of the city. I also took a car to Sal ford, and another 
train, to Stockport in order to gather as quick a picture 
of the Manchester neighborhood as I could. What I 
saw was commonplace enough. All of the larger cities 
of present-day Europe are virtually of modern construc- 
tion. Most of them have grown to their present great 
population in the last fifty years. Hence they have been 
virtually built — not rebuilt — in that time. 

Salford, a part of Manchester, was nothing — great 
cotton and machine works and warehouses. Stockport 
was not anything either, save long lines of brick cottages 
one and two stories high and mills, mills, mills, mills. It 
always astounds me how life repeats itself — any idea in 
life such as a design for a house — over and over and 
over. These houses in Salford, Stockport and Manches- 



174 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



« 



ter proper were such as you might see anywhere in 
Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Baltimore — in the cheap 
streets, I had the sense of being pursued by a deadly 
commonplace. It all looked as people do when they 
think very little, know very little, see very little, do very 
little. I expected to learn that the churches flourished 
here very greatly and that there was an enormous Sun- 
day school somewhere about. There was — at Stock- 
port — the largest in the world I was told, five thousand 
students attending. The thing that impressed me most 
was the presence of the wooden clog or shoe. 

In Stockport there was a drab silence hanging over 
everything — the pathetic dullness of the laborer when 
he has nothing to do save the one thing he cannot do — • 
think. As it was a Sunday the streets were largely 
empty and silent — a dreary, narrow-minded, probably 
religious, conventional world which accepts this blank 
drabness as natural, ordered, probably even necessary. 
To the west and the south and the east and the north 
are great worlds of strangeness and wonder — new 
lands, new people — but these folks can neither see nor 
hear. Here they are harnessed to cotton-mills, believ- 
ing no doubt that God intended it to be so, working from 
youth to age without ever an inkling of the fascinating 
ramifications of life. It appalled me. 

In some respects I think I never saw so dreary a world 
as manufacturing England. In saying this I do not 
wish to indicate that the working conditions are any 
worse than those which prevail in various American cit- 
ies, such as Pittsburgh, and especially the minor cities 
like Lawrence and Fall River. But here was a dark 
workaday world, quite unfavored by climate, a country 
in which damp and fogs prevail for fully three-fourths of 
the year, and where a pall of smoke is always present. I 
remember reading a sign on one of the railway plat- 



SMOKY ENGLAND 175 

forms which stated that owing to the prevalence of 
fogs the company could not be held responsible for 
the running of trains on time. I noticed too, that the 
smoke and damp were so thick everywhere that occa- 
sionally the trees on the roadside or the houses over the 
way would disappear in a lovely, Corot-like mist. Lamps 
were burning in all stores and office-buildings. Street 
cars carried head-lamps and dawned upon you out of a 
hazy gloom. Traffic disappeared in a thick blanket a 
half block away. 

Most of these outlying towns had populations ranging 
from ninety to a hundred thousand, but in so far as in- 
teresting or entertaining developments of civic life were 
concerned — proportioned to their size — there were 
none. They might as well have been villages of five 
hundred or one thousand. Houses, houses, houses, all 
of the same size, all the same color, all the same interior 
arrangement, virtually. 

Everywhere — in Middleton, Oldham, and Rochdale, 
which I visited the first day, and in Boulton, Blackburn, 
and Wigan, which I visited the next — I found this 
curious multiplication of the same thing which you would 
dismiss with a glance — whole streets, areas, neighbor- 
hoods of which you could say, " all alike." 

In Middleton I was impressed with the constant repe- 
tition of " front rooms " or " parlors." You could look 
in through scores of partly open doors (this climate is 
damp but not cold) and see in each a chest of drawers 
exactly like every other chest in the town and in 
the same position relative to the door. Nearly all the 
round tables which these front rooms contained were 
covered with pink, patterned, cotton tablecloths. The 
small single windows, one to each house, contained blue 
or yellow jardinieres set on small tables and containing 
geraniums. The fireplace, always to the right of the 



176 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



4 



room as you looked in the window, glowed with a small 
coal fire. There were no other ornaments that I saw. 
The ceilings of the rooms were exceedingly low and the 
total effect was one of clean, frugal living. 

The great mills bore pleasing names, such as Rob Roy, 
Tabitha, Marietta, and their towering stacks looked down 
upon the humbler habitations at their base much as the 
famous castles of the feudal barons must have looked 
down upon the huts of their serfs. I was constrained 
to think of the wordaday existence that all this sug- 
gested, the long lines of cotton-mill employees going in 
at seven o'clock in the morning, in the dark, and coming 
out at six o'clock at night, in the dark. Many of these 
mills employ a day and a night shift. Their windows, 
when agleam in the smoke or rain, are like patins of fine 
gold. I saw them gleaming at the end of dull streets or 
across the smooth, olive-colored surfaces of mill ponds or 
through the mist and rain. The few that were running 
(the majority of them were shut down because of the 
strike) had a roar like that of Niagara tumbling over 
its rocks — a rich, ominous thunder. In recent years 
the mill-owners have abandoned the old low, two-story 
type of building with its narrow windows and dingy 
aspect of gray stone, and erected in its stead these 
enormous structures — the only approach to the Ameri- 
can sky-scraper I saw in England. They are magnificent 
mills, far superior to those you will see to-day in this 
country, clean, bright and — every one I saw — new. 
If I should rely upon my merely casual impression, 
I should say that there were a thousand such within 
twenty-five miles of Manchester. When seen across 
a foreground of low cottages, such as I have de- 
scribed, they have all the dignity of cathedrals — vast 
temples of labor. I was told by the American Consul- 
General at London that they are equipped with the very 



SMOKY ENGLAND 177 

latest cotton-spinning machinery and are now in a posi- 
tion to hold their own on equal terms with American 
competition, if not utterly to defy it. The intricacy and 
efficiency of the machinery is greater than that employed 
in our mills. I could not help thinking what a far 
cry it was from these humble cottages, some few of 
which in odd corners looked like the simple, thatched huts 
sacred to Burns and " The Cotter's Saturday Night," to 
these lordly mills and the lordly owners behind them — • 
the strong, able, ruthless men whom I saw eating in the 
breakfast-room at the Midland the day before. Think 
of the poor little girls and boys, principally girls, clatter- 
ing to and from work in their wooden shoes and, if you 
will believe it (I saw it at Boulton on a cold, rainy, 
January day), in thin black shawls and white straw hats, 
much darkened by continuous wear. One crowd that 
I observed was pouring out at high noon. I heard a 
whistle yelling its information, and then a mouse-hole 
of a door in one corner of the great structure opened, 
and released the black stream of mill-workers. By com- 
parison, it looked like a small procession of ants or a 
trickle of black water. Small as it was, however, it soon 
filled the street. The air was wet, smoky, gray, the 
windows even at this midday hour gleaming here and 
there with lights. The factory hands were a dreary mass 
in the rain, some of them carrying umbrellas, many with- 
out them, all the women wearing straw hats and black 
shawl? ! 

I looked at their faces — pale, waxy, dull, inefficient. 
I looked at their shapeless skirts hanging like bags 
about their feet. I looked at their flat chests, their 
graceless hands, and then I thought of the strong 
men who know how to use — I hesitate to say exploit — 
inefficiency. What would these women do if they could 
not work in the mills? One thing I am sure of: the 



178 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

mills, whatever charges may be brought against their 
owners in regard to hours, insufficiency of payment, in- 
difference of treatment, are nevertheless better places in 
which to spend one's working hours than the cottages 
with their commonplace round of duties. What can one 
learn washing dishes and scrubbing floors in a cottage? 
I can see some one jumping up to exclaim : " What can 
one learn tying commonplace threads in a cotton mill, 
taking care of eight or nine machines — one lone woman? 
What has she time to learn?" This — if you ask me; 
the single thought of organization, if nothing more. 
The thought that there is such a thing as a great machine 
which can do the work of fifty or a hundred men. It 
will not do to say the average individual can learn this 
method working in a home. It is not time. What the 
race needs is ideas. It needs thoughts of life and in- 
justice and justice and opportunity or the lack of it 
kicked into its senseless clay. It needs to be made to 
think by some rough process or other (gentleness won't 
do it), and this is one way, I like labor-leaders. I like 
big, raw, crude, hungry men who are eager for gain — ■ 
for self-glorification. I like to see them plotting to force 
such men as I saw breakfasting at the Midland to give 
them something — and the people beneath them. I am 
glad to think that the clay whose womankind wears black 
shawls and straw hats in January has sense enough at 
last to appoint these raw, angry fellows, who scheme and 
struggle and fight and show their teeth and call great 
bitter strikes, such as I saw here, and such as had shut 
tight so many of these huge solemn mills. It speaks much 
for the race. It speaks much for thinking, which is be- 
coming more and more common. If this goes on, there 
won't be so many women with drabbly skirts and flat 
chests. There will still be strong men and weak, but 
the conditions may not be so severe. Anyhow let us 



SMOKY ENGLAND 179 

hope so, for it is an optimistic thought and it cheers one 
in the face of all the drab streets and the drab people. I 
have no hope of making millionaires of everybody, nor 
of establishing that futile abstraction, justice; but I do 
cherish the idea of seeing the world growing better and 
more interesting for everybody. And the ills which 
make for thinking are the only things which will bring 
this about. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SMOKY ENGLAND {cOfltiflUed) 

AT Middleton the mills are majestically large and 
the cottages relatively minute. There is a 
famous old inn here, very picturesque to look 
upon, and Somebody of Something's comfortable manor, 
but they were not the point for me. In one of its old 
streets, in the dark doorway of an old house, I en- 
countered an old woman, very heavy, very pale, very 
weary, who stood leaning against the door post. 

"What do you burn here, gas or oil?" I asked, in- 
terested to obtain information on almost any topic and 
seeking a pretext for talking to her. 

"Hey?" she repHed, looking at me wearily, but mak- 
ing no other move. 

"What do you burn?" I asked. "What do you use 
for light, gas or oil?" 

" He," she replied heavily. *' You '11 have to talk very 
loud. I 'm gettin' old and I 'm goin' to die pretty soon." 

" Oh, no," I said, " you 're not old enough for that. 
You 're going to live a long time yet." 

"Hey?" she asked. 

I repeated what I had said. 

" No," she mumbled, and now I saw she had no teeth. 
" I 'm gettin' old. I 'm eighty-two and I 'm goin' to die. 
I been workin' in the mills all my life." 

" Have you ever been out of Middleton? " I asked. 

"Hey?" she replied. 

I repeated. 

" Yes, to Manchester, Saturdays. Not of late, though. 

i8o 



SMOKY ENGLAND i8i 

Not in years and years. I 'm very sick, though, now. 
I 'm goin' to die." 

I could see from her look that what she said was true. 
Only her exceeding weariness employed her mind. I 
learned that water came from a hydrant in the yard, that 
the kitchen floor was of earth. Then I left, noticing as 
I went that she wore wooden-soled shoes. 

In the public square at Boulton, gathered about the 
city-hall, where one would suppose for the sake of civic 
dignity no unseemly spectacle would be permitted, was 
gathered all the paraphernalia of a shabby, eighth-rate cir- 
cus — red wagons, wild animal and domestic horse tents, 
the moderate-sized main tent, the side show, the fat wo- 
man's private wagon, a cage and the like. I never saw so 
queer a scene. The whole square was crowded with tents, 
great and small ; but there was little going on, for a 
drizzling rain was in progress. Can human dullness sink 
lower? I asked myself, feeling that the civic heart of 
things was being profaned. Could utmost drabbiness 
out-drab this? I doubted it. Why should the aldermen 
permit it? Yet I have no doubt this situation appealed 
exactly to the imagination of the working population. 
I can conceive that it would be about the only thing that 
would. It was just raw and cheap and homely enough 
to do it. I left with pleasure. 

When I came into Oldham on a tram-car from Roch- 
dale, it was with my head swimming from the number 
of mills I had seen. I have described the kind — all new. 
But I did not lose them here. 

It was the luncheon hour and I was beginning to grow 
hungry. As I walked along dull streets I noticed several 
small eating-places labeled " fish, chip, and pea restau- 
rant " and " tripe, trotters, and cow-heels restaurant," 
which astonished me greatly — really astonished me. I 
had seen only one such before in my life and that was 



1 82 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

this same morning in Middleton — a " fish, chip, and pea 
restaurant " ; but I did not get the point sufficiently clearly 
to make a note of it. The one that I encountered this 
afternoon had a sign in the window which stated that 
unquestionably its chips were the best to be procured any- 
where and very nourishing. A plate of them standing 
close by made it perfectly plain that potato chips were 
meant. No recommendation was given to either the 
fish or the peas. I pondered over this, thinking that 
such restaurants must be due to the poverty of the people 
and that meat being very dear, these three articles of 
diet were substituted. Here in Oldham, however, I 
saw that several of these restaurants stood in very cen- 
tral places where the rents should be reasonably high and 
the traffic brisk. It looked as though they were popular 
for some other reason. I asked a policeman. 

" What is a * fish, chip, and pea ' restaurant? " I asked. 

" Well, to tell you the truth," he said, " it 's a place 
where a man who 's getting over a spree goes to eat. 
Those things are good for the stomach." 

I pondered over this curiously. There were four such 
restaurants in the immediate vicinity, to say nothing of 
the one labeled " tripe, trotters, and cow-heels," which 
astonished me even more. 

"And what's that for?" I asked of the same 
officer. 

" The same thing. A man who 's been drinking eats 
those things." 

I had to laugh, and yet this indicated another char- 
acteristic of a wet, rainy climate, namely considerable 
drinking. At the next corner a man, a woman, and a 
child conferring slightly confirmed my suspicion. 

" Come on," said the man to the woman, all at once, 
" let 's go to the pub. A beer '11 do you good." 

The three started off together, the child hanging by 



SMOKY ENGLAND 183 

the woman's hand, I followed them with my eyes, for 
I could not imagine quite such a scene in America — not 
done just in this way. Women — a certain type — go 
to the back rooms of saloons well enough; children are 
sent with pails for beer; but just this particular com- 
bination of husband, wife, and child is rare, I am sure. 

And such public houses! To satisfy myself of their 
character I went to three in three different neighborhoods. 
Like those I saw in London and elsewhere around it, 
they were pleasant enough in their arrangement, but 
gloomy. The light from the outside was meager, dark- 
ened as it was by smoke and rain. If you went on back 
into the general lounging-room, lights were immediately 
turned on, for otherwise it was not bright enough to see. 
If you stayed in the front at the bar proper it was still 
dark, and one light — a mantled gas-jet — • was kept 
burning. I asked the second barmaid with whom I con- 
ferred about this : 

" You don't always have to keep a light burning here, 
do you? " 

" Always, except two or three months in summer," she 
replied. " Sometimes in July and August we don't need 
it. As a rule we do." 

" Surely, it is n't always dark and smoky like this ? " 

"You should see it sometimes, if you call this bad," 
she replied contemptuously. " It 's black." 

" I should say it 's very near that now," I commented. 

" Oh, no, most of the mills are not running. You 
should see it when it 's foggy and the mills are running." 

She seemed to take a sort of pride in the matter and 
I sympathized with her. It is rather distinguished to 
live in an extreme of any kind, even if it is only that 
of a smoky wetness of climate. I went out, making my 
way to the " Kafe " Monico, as the policeman who recom- 
mended the place pronounced it. Here I enjoyed such 



i84 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

a meal as only a third-rate restaurant which is consid- 
ered first by the local inhabitants would supply. 

I journeyed forth once more, interested by the fact that, 
according to Baedeker, from one point somewhere, on a 
dear day, whenever that might be, six hundred stacks 
might be seen. In this fog I soon found that it was 
useless to look for them. Instead I contented myself 
with noting how, in so many cases, the end of a street, 
or the sheer dismal length of an unbroken row of houses, 
all alike, was honored, made picturesque, made grand 
even, by the presence of the mills, these gloomy monu- 
ments of labor. 

There is an architecture of manufacture, dreary and 
shabby as its setting almost invariably is, which in its 
solemnity, strangeness of outline, pathos and dignity, 
quite rivals, if it does not surpass, the more heralded 
forms of the world — its cathedrals, parthenons, Moor- 
ish temples and the like. I have seen it often in America 
and elsewhere where a group of factory buildings, un- 
planned as to arrangement and undignified as to sub- 
stance, would yet take on an exquisite harmony of line 
and order after which a much more pretentious institu- 
tion might well have been modeled. At Stockport, near 
Manchester, for instance, on the Mersey, which here is 
little more than a rivulet, but picturesque and lovely, I 
saw grouped a half-dozen immense mills with towering 
chimneys which, for architectural composition from the 
vantage point of the stream, could not have been sur- 
passed. They had the dignity of vast temples, housing a 
world of under-paid life which was nevertheless rich in 
color and enthusiasm. Sometimes I fancy the modem 
world has produced nothing more significant architectur- 
ally speaking, than the vast manufactory. Here in Old- 
ham they were gathered in notable clusters, towering over 
the business heart and the various resident sections so that 



SMOKY ENGLAND 185 

the whole scene might well be said to have been domi- 
nated by it. They bespeak a world of thought and feel- 
ing which we of more intellectual fields are inclined at 
times to look on as dull and low, but are they? I confess 
that for myself they move me at times as nothing else 
does. They have vast dignity — the throb and sob of 
the immense. And what is more dignified than toiling 
humanity, anyhow — its vague, formless, illusioned hopes 
and fears? I wandered about the dull rain-sodden 
thoroughfares, looking in at the store windows. In one 
I found a pair of gold and a pair of silver slippers offered 
for sale — for what feet in Oldham ? They were not 
high in price, but this sudden suggestion of romance in 
a dark workaday world took my fancy. 

At four o'clock, after several hours of such wandering, 
I returned to the main thoroughfare — the market-place 
— in order to see what it was the hundred and fifty 
thousand inhabitants found to entertain them. I looked 
for theaters and found two, one of them a large moving- 
picture show. Of a sudden, walking in a certain direc- 
tion my ears were greeted by a most euphonious clatter — 
so interwoven and blended were the particular sounds 
which I recognized at once as coming from the feet of a 
multitude, shod with wooden-soled clogs. Where were 
they coming from ? I saw no crowd. Suddenly, up a side 
street, coming toward me down a slope I detected a vast 
throng. The immense moving-picture theater had closed 
for the afternoon and its entire audience, perhaps two 
thousand in all, was descending toward the main street. 
In connection with this crowd, as with the other at Boul- 
ton, I noted the phenomenon of the black or white straw 
hat, the black or brown shawl, the shapeless skirts and 
wooden-soled clogs of the women; the dull, common- 
place suit and wooden clogs of the men. Where were 
they going now? Home, of course. These must be a 



1 86 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

portion of the strikers. They looked to me like typical 
mill-workers out on a holiday and their faces had a waxy 
pallor. I liked the sound of their shoes, though, as they 
came along. It was like the rattle of many drums. 
They might have been waltzing on a wooden floor. The 
thing had a swing and a rhythm of its own. '' What if 
a marching army were shod with wooden shoes ! " I 
thought; and then, "What if a mob with guns and 
swords came clattering so ! " 

A crowd like this is like a flood of water pouring down- 
hill. They came into the dark main street and it was 
quite brisk for a time with their presence. Then they 
melted away into the totality of the stream, as rivers do 
into the sea, and things were as they had been before. 

If there were any restaurants other than the " Kafe " 
Monico, I did not find them. For entertainment I sup- 
pose those who are not religiously minded do as they do 
in Fall River and elsewhere — walk up and down past 
the bright shop windows or sit and drink in the public 
houses, which are unquestionably far more cheerful by 
night than by day. 

The vast majority who live here must fall back for 
diversion on other things, their work, their church, their 
family duties, or their vices. I am satisfied that under 
such conditions sex plays a far more vital part in cities 
of this description than almost anywhere else. For, 
although the streets be dull and the duties of life 
commonplace, sex and the mysteries of temperament 
weave their spells quite as effectively here as else- 
where, if not more so. In fact, denied the more 
varied outlets of a more interesting world, human- 
ity falls back almost exclusively on sex. Women and 
men, or rather boys and girls (for most of the 
grown women and men had a drudgy, disillusioned, 
wearied look), went by each other glancing and smiling. 



SMOKY ENGLAND 187 

They were alert to be entertained by each other, and while 
I saw little that I would call beauty in the women, or 
charm and smartness in the men, nevertheless I could 
understand how the standards of New York and Paris 
might not necessarily prevail here. Clothes may not fit, 
fashion may find no suggestion of its dictates, but after 
all, underneath, the lure of temperament and of beauty 
is the same. And so these same murky streets may burn 
with a rich passional life of their own. I left Oldham 
finally in the dark and in a driving rain, but not without 
a sense of the sturdy vigor of the place, keen if drab. 



1 



CHAPTER XIX 

CANTERBURY 

IT was not so long after this that I journeyed south- 
ward. My plan was to leave London two days 
ahead of Barfleur, visit Canterbury and Dover, and 
meet with him there to travel to Paris together, and the 
Riviera. From the Riviera I was to go on to Rome and 
he was to return to England. 

Among other pleasant social duties I paid a farewell 
visit to Sir Scorp, who shall appear often hereafter in 
these pages. During the Christmas holidays at Bar- 
fleur's I had become well acquainted with this Irish 
knight and famed connoisseur of art, and while 
in London I had seen much of him. Here in his 
lovely mansion in Cheyne Walk I found him sur- 
rounded by what one might really call the grandeur 
of his pictures. His house contained distinguished 
examples of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Van Dyck, Paul 
Potter, Velasquez, Mancini and others, and as I con- 
templated him on this occasion he looked not un- 
like one of the lymphatic cavaliers of Van Dyck's can- 
vases. A pale gentleman, this — very rei. ^ ' :. !us spirit, 
very far removed from the common ru^ .t h*e, con- 
cerned only with the ultimately artistic, and wisi'ing to 
be free of everything save the leisure to attend ti> this. 
He was not going to leave London, he thought, a^ this 
time, except possibly for a short visit to Pari?, He was 
greatly concerned with the problem of finding a dilapi- 
dated "cahstle" which he could restore, live in, i'-M -. "th 
his pictures and eventually sell, or dedicate to 'r's ^e- 

i88 



CANTERBURY 189 

loved England as a memorial of himself. It must be a 
perfect example of Tudor architecture — that he invari- 
ably repeated. I gained the impression that he might fill 
it with interesting examples of some given school or 
artist and leave it as a public monument. 

He urged upon me that I ought to go about the work 
of getting up a loan exhibit of representative American 
art, and have it brought to London. He commended me 
to the joys of certain cities and scenes — Pisa, San Mini- 
ato outside of Florence, the Villa Doria at Rome. I had 
to smile at the man's profound artistic assurance, for he 
spoke exactly as a grandee recounting the glories of his 
kingdom. I admired the paleness of his forehead and 
his hands and cast one longing look at his inestimable 
Frans Hals. To think that any man in these days should 
have purchased for little a picture that can in all likeli- 
hood be sold for $500,000 — it was like walking into 
Aladdin's cave. 

The morning I left it was gray as usual. I had 
brought in all my necessary belongings from Bridgely 
Level and installed them in my room at the hotel, packed 
and ready. The executive mind of Barfleur was on the 
qui vive to see that nothing was forgotten. A certain 
type of tie must be purchased for use on the Riviera — 
he had overlooked that. He thought my outing hat was 
not quite light enough in color, so we went back to change 
it. I had lost my umbrella in the excitement, and that had 
to be replaced. But finally, rushing to and fro in a taxi, 
loaded like a van with belongings, Barfleur breathing 
stertorously after each venture into a shop, we arrived 
at the Victoria Station. Never having been on the Con- 
tinent before, I did not realize until we got there the 
wisdom of Barfleur's insistence that I pack as much of my 
belongings as possible in bags, and as little as possible in 
trunks. Traveling first class, as most of those who have 



190 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

much luggage do, it is cheaper. As most travelers know, 
one can take as many as five or six parcels or bags in 
the compartment with one, and stow them on racks and 
under the seats, which saves a heavy charge for excess 
baggage. In some countries, such as Italy, nothing is 
carried free save your hand-luggage which you take in 
your compartment with you. In addition the rates are 
high. I think I paid as much as thirty shillings for the 
little baggage I had, over and above that which I took in 
my compartment with me. To a person with a frugal 
temperament such as mine, that is positively disconcert- 
ing. It was my first taste of what I came subsequently 
to look upon as greedy Europe. 

As the train rushed southeastwards I did my best 
to see the pleasant country through which we were 
speeding — the region indicated on the map as North 
Downs. I never saw any portion of English country 
anywhere that I did not respond to the charming 
simplicity of it, and understand and appreciate the 
Englishman's pride in it. It has all the quality of a 
pastoral poem — the charm of Arcady — fields of sheep, 
rows of quaint chimney pots and odd houses tucked 
away among the trees, exquisite moldy and sagging roofs, 
doorways and windows which look as though loving care 
had been spent on them. Although this was January, 
all the leafless trees were covered with a fine thin mold, 
as green as spring leaves. At Rochester the ruins of an 
ancient castle came into view and a cathedral which I 
was not to see. At Faversham I had to change from the 
Dover express to a local, and by noon I was at Canter- 
bury and was looking for the Fleur-de-lis which had 
been recommended to me as the best hotel there, " At 
least," observed Barfleur, quite solemnly to me as we 
parted, " I think you can drink the wine." I smiled, for 
my taste in that respect was not so cultivated as his. 






CANTERBURY 191 

Of all the places I visited in England, not excluding 
Oxford, I believe that Canterbury pleased me most. The 
day may have had something to do with it. It was warm 
and gray — threatening rain at times — but at times also 
the sun came out and gave the old English town a glow 
which was not unrelated to spring and Paradise. You 
will have to have a fondness for things English to like it 

— quaint, two-story houses with unexpected twists to 
their roofs, and oriel and bay windows which have been 
fastened on in the most unexpected places and in the 
strangest fashion. The colors, too, in some instances, 
are high for England — reds and yellows and blues ; 
but in the main a smoky red-brick tone prevails. The 
river Stour, which in America would be known as 
Stour's Creek, runs through the city in two branches; 
and you find it in odd places, walled in closely by the 
buildings, hung over by little balconies and doorsteps, 
the like of which I did not see again until I reached 
Venice. There were rooks in the sky, as I noticed, when 
I came out of the railway station; I was charmed with 
winding streets, and a general air of peace and quiet — 
but I could not descry the cathedral anywhere. I made 
my way up High Street — which is English for " Main " 

— and finally found my recommended inn, small and 
dark, but in the hands of Frenchmen and consequently 
well furnished in the matter of food. I came out after 
a time and followed this street to its end, passing the 
famous gate where the pilgrims used to sink on their 
knees and in that position pray their way to the cathedral. 
As usual my Baedeker gave me a world of information, 
but I could not stomach it, and preferred to look at the 
old stones of which the gate was composed, wondering 
that it had endured so long. The little that I knew of St. 
Augustine and King Ethelbert and Chaucer and Thomas 
a Becket and Laud came back to me. I could not have 



192 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



i 



called it sacred ground, but it was colored at least witK 
the romance of history, and I have great respect for 
what people once believed, whether it was sensible or not. 
Canterbury is a city of twenty-eight thousand, with 
gas-works and railroads and an electric-power plant 
and moving pictures and a skating-rink. But, though 
it has all these and much more of the same kind, 
it nevertheless retains that indefinable something which 
is pure poetry and makes England exquisite. As I 
look at it now, having seen much more of other 
parts of Europe, the quality which produces this in- 
definable beauty in England is not so much em- 
bodied in the individual as in the race. If you look 
at architectural developments in other countries you 
have the feeling at times as if certain individuals 
had greatly influenced the appearance of a city or a 
country. This is true of Paris and Berlin, Florence and 
Milan. Some one seems to have worked out a scheme 
at some time or other. In England I could never detect 
an individual or public scheme of any kind. It all seemed 
to have grown up, like an unheralded bed of flowers. 
Again I am satisfied that it is the English temperament 
which, at its best, provides the indefinable lure which 
exists in all these places. I noticed it in the towns about 
Manchester where, in spite of rain and smoke, the same 
poetic hominess prevailed. Here in Canterbury, where 
the architecture dates in its variation through all of 
eight centuries, you feel the dominance of the English 
temperament which has produced it. To-day, in the new- 
est sections of London — Hammersmith and Seven 
Kings, West Dulwich and North Finchley — you still 
feel it at work, accidentally or instinctively constructing 
this atmosphere which is common to Oxford and Canter- 
bury. It is compounded of a sense of responsibility and 
cleanliness and religious feeling and strong national and 



CANTERBURY 193 

family ties. You really feel in England the distinction 
of the fireside and the family heirloom; and the fact that 
a person must always keep a nice face on things, how- 
ever bad they may be. The same spirit erects bird-boxes 
on poles in the yard and lays charming white stone door- 
steps and plants vines to clamber over walls and windows. 
It is a sweet and poetic spirit, however dull it may 
seem by comparison with the brilliant iniquities of other 
realms. Here along this little river Stour the lawns came 
down to the water in some instances ; the bridges over it 
were built with the greatest care; and although houses 
lined it on either side for several miles of its ramblings, 
it was nevertheless a clean stream. I noticed in different 
places, where the walls were quite free of any other 
marks, a poster giving the picture and the history of a 
murderer who was wanted by the police in Nottingham, 
and it came to me, in looking at it, that he would have a 
hard time anywhere in England concealing his identity. 
The native horror of disorder and scandal would cause 
him to be yielded up on the moment. 

In my wanderings, which were purely casual and hap- 
hazard, I finally came upon the cathedral which loomed 
up suddenly through a curving street under a leaden sky. 
It was like a lovely song, rendered with great pathos. 
Over a Gothic gate of exquisite workmanship and end- 
less labor, it soared — two black stone towers rising 
shapely and ornate into the gray air. I looked up to 
some lattices which gave into what might have been the 
belfry, and saw birds perched just as they should have 
been. The walls, originally gray, had been turned by 
time and weather into a soft spongy black which some- 
how fitted in exquisitely with the haze of the landscape. 
I had a curious sensation of darker and lighter shades of 
gray — lurking pools of darkness here and there, and 
brightness in spots that became almost silver. The cathe- 



194 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

dral grounds were charmingly enclosed in vine-covered 
walls that were nevertheless worked out in harmonious 
detail of stone. An ancient walk of some kind, over- 
hung with broken arches that had fallen into decay, led 
away into a green court which, by a devious process of 
other courts and covered arches, gave into the cloister 
proper. I saw an old deacon, or canon, of the church 
walking here in stately meditation ; and a typical English 
yeoman, his trousers fastened about the knee by the use- 
less but immemorial strap, came by, wheeling a few 
bricks in a barrow. There were endless courts, it seemed 
to me, surrounded by two-story buildings, all quaint in 
design, and housing Heaven-knows-what subsidiary fac- 
tors of the archiepiscopal life. They seemed very simple 
habitations to me. Children played here on the walks 
and grass, gardeners worked at vines and fences, and 
occasional workmen appeared — men who, I supposed, 
were connected with the architectural repairs which were 
being made to the fagade. As I stood in the courtyard 
of the archbishop's house, which was in front and to the 
left of the cathedral as you faced it, a large blue-gray 
touring-car suddenly appeared, and a striking-looking 
ecclesiastic in a shovel hat stepped out. I had the wish 
and the fancy that I was looking at the archbishop him- 
self — a sound, stern, intellectual-looking person — but 
I did not ask. He gave me a sharp, inquiring look, and 
I withdrew beyond these sacred precincts and into the 
cathedral itself, where a tinny-voiced bell was beginning 
to ring for afternoon service. 

I am sure I shall never forget the interior of Canter- 
bury. It was the first really old, great cathedral that I 
had seen — for I had not prized very highly either St. 
Paul's or St. Alban's. I had never quite realized how 
significant these structures must have been in an age 
when they were far and away the most important build- 






CANTERBURY 195 

ings of the time. No king's palace could ever have had 
the importance of Canterbury, and the cry from the 
common peasant to the Archiepiscopal see must have been 
immense. Here really ruled the primate of all England, 
and here Becket was murdered. 

Of all known architectural forms the Gothic corre- 
sponds more nearly to the finest impulse in nature itself — 
that is, to produce the floreated form. The aisles of the 
trees are no more appealing artistically than those of 
a great cathedral, and the overhanging branches through 
which the light falls have not much more charm than 
some of these perfect Gothic ceilings sustained by their 
many branching arms of stone. Much had happened, 
apparently, to the magnificent stained-glass windows 
which must have filled the tall-pointed openings at differ- 
ent periods, and many of them have been replaced by 
plain frosted glass. Those that remain are of such rich- 
ness of color and such delightful variety of workmanship 
that, seen at the end of long stretches of aisles and ambu- 
latories, they are like splotches of blood or deep indigo, 
throwing a strange light on the surrounding stone. 

I presently fell in tow of a guide. It is said to-day 
that Americans are more like the Germans than like the 
English ; but from the types I encountered in England I 
think the variety of American temperaments spring nat- 
urally from the mother country. Four more typical New 
England village specimens I never saw than these cathe- 
dral ushers or guides. They were sitting on the steps 
leading up to the choir, clad in cap and gown, engaged in 
cheerful gossip. 

" Your turn, Henry," said one, and the tallest of the 
three came around and unlocked the great iron gates 
which give into the choir. Then began, for my special 
benefit, a magnificent oration. We were joined, after 
we had gone a little way, by a party of ladies from Penn- 



19^ 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



sylvania who were lurking in one of the transepts; and 
nothing would do but my guide must go back to the iron 
entrance-way to the choir and begin all over. Not a sen- 
tence was twisted, not a pause misplaced. *' Good heav- 
ens," I thought, " he does that every day in the year, 
perhaps a dozen times a day." He was like a phono- 
graph with but one record, which is repeated endlessly. 
Nevertheless, the history of the archbishops, the Black 
Prince, the Huguenot refugees, the carving of the wood- 
work and the disappearance of the windows was all in- 
teresting. After having made the rounds of the cathe- 
dral, we came out into the cloister, the corridors of which 
were all black and crumbling with age, and he indicated 
the spot and described the manner in which Becket had 
been stabbed and had fallen. I don't know when a bit 
of history has moved me so much. 

It was the day — the gentle quality of it — its very 
spring-like texture that made it all so wonderful. The 
grass in this black court was as green as new lettuce ; the 
pendants and facets of the arches were crumbling into 
black sand — and spoke seemingly of a thousand years. 
High overhead the towers and the pinnacles, soaring as 
gracefully as winged living things, looked down while I 
faced the black-gowned figure of my guide and thought 
of the ancient archbishop crossing this self-same turf 
(how long can be the life of grass?). 

When I came outside the gate into the little square or 
triangle which faces it I found a beautiful statue of the 
lyric muse — a semi-nude dancing girl erected to the 
memory of Christopher Marlowe. It surprised me a 
little to find it here, facing Canterbury, in what might 
be called the sacred precincts of religious art; but it is 
suitably placed and brought back to my mind the related 
kingdom of poetry. 

All the little houses about have heavy overhanging 



CANTERBURY 197 

eaves and diamond-shaped, lead-paned windows. The 
walls are thick and whitewashed, ranging in color from 
cream to brown. They seem unsuited to modern life; 
and yet they frequently offered small shop-windows full 
of all the things that make it: picture-postcards, Amer- 
ican shoes, much-advertised candy, and the latest books 
and magazines. I sought a tea-room near by and had 
tea, looking joyously out against the wall where some 
clematis clambered, and then wandered back to the depot 
to get my mackintosh and umbrella — for it was be- 
gining to rain. For two hours more I walked up and 
down in the rain and dark, looking into occasional win- 
dows where the blinds had not been drawn and stopping 
in taprooms or public hosues where rosy barmaids waited 
on one with courteous smiles. 



CHAPTER XX 

EN ROUTE TO PARIS 

ONE of the things which dawned upon me in 
moving about England, and particularly as I 
was leaving it, was the reason for the ines- 
timable charm of Dickens. I do not know that 
anywhere in London or England I encountered any 
characters which spoke very forcefully of those he 
described. It is probable that they were all some- 
what exaggerated. But of the charm of his setting 
there can be no doubt. He appeared at a time when the 
old order was giving way, and the new — the new as we 
have known it in the last sixty years — was manifesting 
itself very sharply. Railroads were just coming in and 
coaches being dispensed with ; the modern hotel was not 
yet even thought of, but it was impending. 

Dickens, born and raised in London, was among the 
first to perceive the wonder of the change and to contrast 
it graphically with what had been and still was. In such 
places as St. Alban's, Marlowe, Canterbury, Oxford, and 
others, I could see what the old life must have been like 
when the stage-coach ruled and made the principal high- 
ways lively with traffic. Here in Canterbury and else- 
where there were inns sacred to the characters of Dick- 
ens; and you could see how charming that world must 
have appeared to a man who felt that it was passing. 
He saw it in its heyday, and he recorded it as it could not 
have been recorded before and can never be again. He 
saw also the charm of simple English life — the native 
love of cleanly pots and pans and ordered dooryards; 

198 



EN ROUTE TO PARIS 199 

and that, fortunately, has not changed. I cannot think 
of any one doing England as Dickens did it until there 
is something new to be done — the old spirit manifested 
in a new way. From Shakespeare to Dickens the cry 
is long; from Dickens to his successors it may be longer 
still. 

I was a bit perturbed on leaving Canterbury to realize 
that on the morrow at this same time I should catch my 
first glimpse of Paris. The clerk at the station who kept 
my bags for me noted that I came from New York and 
told me he had a brother in Wisconsin, and that he liked 
it very much out there. 

I said, " I suppose you will be coming to America 
yourself, one of these days? " 

" Oh, yes," he said ; " the big chances are out there. 
I '11 either go to Canada or Wisconsin." 

" Well, there are plenty of states to choose from," I 
said. 

" A lot of people have gone from this place," he replied. 

It rained hard on the way to Dover; but when I 
reached there it had ceased, and I even went so far as to 
leave my umbrella in the train. When I early discovered 
my loss I reported it at once to the porter who was 
carrying my belongings. 

" Don't let that worry you," he replied, in the calmest 
and most assuring of English tones. " They always look 
through the trains. You '11 find it in the parcel-room." 

Sure enough, when I returned there it was behind the 
clerk's desk ; and it was handed to me promptly. If I had 
not had everything which I had lost, barring one stick, 
promptly returned to me since I had been in England, I 
should not have thought so much of this; but it confirmed 
my impression that I was among a people who are tem- 
peramentally honest. 

My guide led me to the Lord Warden Hotel, where I 



200 ^A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



d 



arranged myself comfortably in a good room for 
the night. It pleased me, on throwing open my win- 
dows, to see that this hotel fronted a bay or arm of 
the sea and that I was in the realm of great ships and 
sea traffic instead of the noisy heart of a city. Because 
of a slight haze, not strong enough to shut out the lights 
entirely, fog-horns and fog-bells were going; and I could 
hear the smash of waves on the shore. I decided that 
after dinner I would reconnoiter Dover. There was a 
review of warships in the harbor at the time; and the 
principal streets were crowded with marines in red jackets 
and white belts and the comic little tambourine caps 
cocked jauntily over one ear. Such a swarm of red- 
jackets I never saw in my life. They were walking up 
and down in pairs and trios, talking briskly and flirting 
with the girls. I fancy that representatives of the under- 
world of women who prey on this type of youth were 
here in force. 

Much to my astonishment, in this Snargate Street I 
found a south-of-England replica of the " Fish, Chip, 
and Pea " institution of the Manchester district. I con- 
cluded from this that it must be an all-English institution, 
and wherever there was much drunkenness there would 
be these restaurants. In such a port as Dover, where 
sailors freely congregate, it would be apt to be common ; 
and so it proved. 

Farther up High Street, in its uttermost reaches in 
fact, I saw a sign which read : " Thomas Davidge, Bone- 
setter and Tooth-surgeon " — whatever that may be. 
Its only rival was another I had seen in Boulton which 
ran : " Temperance Bar and Herbal Stores." 

The next morning I was up early and sought the fa- 
mous castle on the hill, but could not gain admission and 
could not see it for the fog. I returned to the beach 
when the fog had lifted and I could see not only 



EN ROUTE TO PARIS 201 

the castle on the hill, but the wonderful harbor besides. 
It was refreshing to see the towering cliff of chalk, the 
pearl-blue water, the foaming surf along the interesting 
sea walk, and the lines of summer — or perhaps they are 
winter — residences facing the sea on this one best street. 
Dover, outside of this one street, was not — to me — 
handsome, but here all was placid, comfortable, socially 
interesting. I wondered what type of Englishman it 
was that came to summer or winter at Dover — so con- 
veniently located between London and Paris. 

At ten-thirty this morning the last train from London 
making the boat for Calais was to arrive and with it 
Barfleur and all his paraphernalia bound for Paris. 

It seems to me that I have sung the praises of Barfleur 
as a directing manager quite sufficiently for one book ; but 
I shall have to begin anew. He arrived as usual very 
brisk, a porter carrying four or five pieces of luggage, 
his fur coat over his arm, his monocle gleaming as though 
it had been freshly polished, a cane and an umbrella in 
hand, and inquiring crisply whether I had secured the 
particular position on deck which he had requested me 
to secure and hold. If it were raining, according to a 
slip of paper on which he had written instructions days 
before I left London, I was to enter the cabin of the 
vessel which crossed the channel; preempt a section of 
seat along the side wall by putting all my luggage there ; 
and bribe a porter to place two chairs in a comfortable 
windless position on deck to which we could repair in 
case it should clear up on the way over. All of this I 
faithfully did. The chairs had the best possible position 
behind the deck-house and one of my pieces of luggage 
was left there as a guarantee that they belonged to me. 
It looked like rain when the train arrived, and we went 
below for a sandwich and a cup of coffee; but before the 
boat left it faired up somewhat and we sat on deck study- 



202 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ing the harbor and the interesting company which was 
to cross with us. Some twenty EngHsh school-girls in 
charge of several severe-looking chaperones were cross- 
ing to Paris, either for a holiday, or, as Barfleur sug-. 
gested, to renew their studies in a Paris school. A duller 
lot of maidens it would be hard to conceive, and yet some 
of them were not at all bad-looking. Conservatism and 
proper conduct were written all over them. Their cloth- 
ing was severely plain, and their manners were most cir- 
cumspect. None of that vivacity which characterizes the 
average American girl would have been tolerated under 
the circumstances. There was no undue giggling and 
little, if any, jesting. They interested me, because I in- 
stantly imagined twenty American girls of the same age 
in their place. They would have manifested twenty 
times the interest and enthusiasm, only in England that 
would have been the height of bad manners. As it was 
these English maidens sat in a quaint row all the way 
over, and disappeared quite conservatively into the train 
at Calais. 

This English steamer crossing the channel to France 
was a disappointment to me in one way. I had heard for 
some time past that the old uncomfortable channel boats 
had been dispensed with and new commodious steamers 
put in their place. As a matter of fact, these boats were 
not nearly so large as those that run from New York to 
Coney Island, nor so commodious, though much cleaner 
and brighter. If it had rained, as Barfleur anticipated, 
the cabin below would have been intolerably overcrowded 
and stuffy. As it was, all the passengers were on the 
upper deck, sitting in camp chairs and preparing stoically 
to be sick. It was impossible to conceive that a distance 
so short, not more than twenty-three or four miles, 
should be so disagreeable as Barfleur said it was at times. 
The boat did not pitch to any extent on this trip over. 



EN ROUTE TO PARIS 203 

On my return, some three months later, I had a different 
experience. But now the wind blew fiercely and it was 
cold. The channel was as gray as a rabbit and of- 
fensively bleak. I did not imagine the sea could be so 
dull-looking, and France, when it appeared in the dis- 
tance, was equally bleak in appearance. As we drew 
near Calais it was no better — a shore-line beset with gas 
tanks and iron foundries. But when we actually reached 
the dock and I saw a line of sparkling French 
facteurs looking down on the boat from the platform 
above — presto! England was gone. Gone all the 
solemnity and the politeness of the porters who had 
brought our luggage aboard, gone the quiet civility of 
ship officers and train-men, gone the solid doughlike quies- 
cence of the whole English race. It seemed to me on the 
instant as if the sky had changed and instead of the gray 
misty pathos of English life — albeit sweet and roman- 
tic — had come the lively slap-dash of another world. 
These men who looked down on us with their snappy 
birdlike eyes were no more like the English than a spar- 
row is like a great auk. They were black-haired, black- 
eyed, lean, brown, active. They had on blue aprons and 
blue jumpers and a kind of military cap. There was a 
touch of scarlet somewhere, either in their caps or their 
jackets, I forget which ; and somewhere near by I saw a 
French soldier — his scarlet woolen trousers and lead- 
blue coat contrasting poorly, so far as eclat goes, with the 
splendid trimness of the British. Nevertheless he did 
not look inefficient, but raw and forceful, as one imagines 
the soldiers of Napoleon should be. The vividness of 
the coloring made up for much, and I said at once that I 
would not give France for fifty million Englands. I 
felt, although I did not speak the language, as though 
I had returned to America. 

It is curious how one feels about France, or at least 



204 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

how I feel about it For all of six weeks I had been re- 
joicing in the charms and the virtues of the English. 
London is a great city — splendid — the intellectual capi- 
tal of the world. Manchester and the north represent 
as forceful a manufacturing realm as the world holds, 
there is no doubt of that. The quaintness and sweetness 
of English country life is not to be surpassed for charm 
and beauty. But France has fifty times the spirit and 
enthusiasm of England. After London and the English 
country it seems strangely young and vital. France is 
often spoken of as decadent — but I said to myself, 
" Good Lord, let us get some of this decadence, and take 
it home with us. It is such a cheerful thing to have 
around." I would commend it to the English par- 
ticularly. 

On the way over Barfleur had been giving me addi- 
tional instructions. I was to stay on board when the boat 
arrived and signal a f acteur who would then come and get 
my luggage, I was to say to him, "Sept colis" where- 
upon he would gather up the bundles and lead the way to 
the dock. I was to be sure and get his number, for all 
French facteurs were scoundrels, and likely to rob you. 
I did exactly as I was told, while Barfleur went forward to 
engage a section, first class, and to see that we secured 
places in the dining-car for the first service. Then he re- 
turned and found me on the dock, doing my best to keep 
track of the various pieces of luggage, while the facte«r 
did his best to secure the attention of a customs in- 
spector. 

It was certainly interesting to see the difference be- 
tween the arrival of this boat at Calais and the similar 
boat which took us off the Mauretania at Fishguard. 
There, although the crowd which had arrived was equally 
large, all was peaceful and rather still. The porters 
went about their work in such a matter-of-fact manner. 



EN ROUTE TO PARIS 205 

All was in apple-pie order. There was no shouting to 
speak of. Here all was hubbub and confusion, appar- 
ently, although it was little more than French enthusiasm. 
You would have fancied that the French guards and fac- 
teurs were doing their best to liberate their pent-up feel- 
ings. They bustled restlessly to and fro ; they grimaced ; 
they reassured you frequently by look and sign that all 
would be well, must be so-. Inside of five minutes, — 
during which time I examined the French news-stand and 
saw how marvelously English conservatism had disap- 
peared in this distance of twenty miles, — the luggage had 
been passed on and we were ready to enter the train. 
Barfleur had purchased a number of papers, Figaro, Gil 
Bias, and others in order to indicate the difference be- 
tween the national lives of the two countries which I was 
now to contrast. I never saw a man so eager to see 
what effect a new country would have on another. He 
wanted me to see the difference between the English and 
the French papers at once ; and although I was thoroughly 
familiar with it already, I carefully examined these latest 
productions of the French presses. The same delicious 
nudities that have been flourishing in the French papers 
for years were there, the same subtle Gallic penchant for 
the absurd and the ridiculous. I marveled anew at the 
sprightliness of these figures, which never cross the Atlan- 
tic into American papers. We do not know how to draw 
them because we are not accustomed to them in our lives. 
As a matter of fact the American papers and magazines 
adhere rigorously to the English standard. We have 
varied some in presentation, but have not broadened the 
least in treatment. As a matter of fact I believe that the 
American weekly and monthly are even more conserva- 
tive than the British paper of the same standard. We 
think we are different, but we are not. We have not even 
anything in common with the Germans, from whom we 



2o6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

are supposed to have drawn so much of our national per- 
sonaHty. 

However, — the train started after a few moments and 
soon we were speeding through that low flat country 
which lies between Calais and Paris. It was a five-hour 
run direct, but we were going to stop off at Amiens to 
see the great cathedral there. I was struck at once by 
the difference between the English and the French land- 
scape. Here the trees were far fewer, and what there 
were of them were not tinged with that rich green mold 
which is characteristic of every tree in England. The 
towns, too, as they flashed past — for this was an express 
— were radically different in their appearance. I noted 
the superabundance of conical red roofs swimming in a 
silvery light, and hard white walls that you could see for 
miles. No trees intervened to break the view, and now 
and then a silvery thread of a river appeared. 

It was on this trip that I gathered my first impressions 
of a French railway as contrasted with those of England 
and America. The French rails were laid to the stand- 
ard gage, I noticed, and the cars were after the American 
not the English style : large, clean, commodious, with 
this improvement over the American car that they were of 
the corridor and compartment style as contrasted with 
our one room, open-space style. After my taste of the 
compartment car in England I was fairly satisfied to part 
forever with the American plan of one long open room in 
which every one can see every one else, interesting as that 
spectacle may be to some. The idea of some privacy 
appealed to me more. The American Pullman has always 
seemed a criminal arrangement to me, anyhow, and at 
Manchester I had met a charming society woman who in 
passing had told me that the first time she was compelled 
to undress in an American sleeping car she cried. Her 
personal sense of privacy was so outrageously invaded. 



EN ROUTE TO PARIS 207 

Our large magnates having their own private cars or 
being able to charter a whole train on occasion need not 
worry about this small matter of delicacy in others (it 
would probably never concern them personally anyhow) 
and so the mass and the unsuspecting stranger is made to 
endure what he bitterly resents and what they never feel. 
I trust time and a growing sense of chivalry in the men at 
the top as well as a sense of privilege and necessity in the 
mass at the bottom will alter all this. America is a 
changing country. In due time, after all the hogs are 
fed or otherwise disposed of, a sense of government of 
the people for the people will probably appear. It has 
made only the barest beginning as yet. There are some 
things that the rank and file are entitled to, however — 
even the rank and file — and these they will eventually 
get. 

I was charmed with the very medieval air of Amiens, 
when we reached there, a bare, gray, cobble-stony city 
which, however, appeared to be solid and prosperous. 
Here, as in the rest of France, I found that the conical- 
roofed tower, the high-peaked roof, the solid gray or 
white wall, and the thick red tile, fluted or flat, combined 
to produce what may be looked upon as the national touch. 
The houses here varied considerably from the Engljsh 
standard in being in many cases very narrow and quite 
high for their width — four and five stories. They are 
crowded together, too, in a seemingly defensive way, 
and seem to lack light and air. The solid white or gray 
shutters, the thick fluted rain-pipe, and the severe, sim- 
ple thickness of the walls produced an atmosphere which 
I came to look upon after a time as supremely Gallic, 
lingering on from a time when France was a very dif- 
ferent country from what it is to-day. 

Amiens was all of this. It would have seemed hard 
and cold and bare and dry except for these little quirks 



2o8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

of roofs, and the lightness of the spirit of the people. 
We wandered through high-walled, cobble-paved streets 
until suddenly we came on the cathedral, soaring up- 
ward out of a welter of the dreary and commonplace. I 
had thought Canterbury was wonderful — but now I 
knew that I had never seen anything in my life before so 
imposing as Amiens. Pure Gothic, like Canterbury, it 
was so much larger; a perfect maze of pinnacles, towers, 
arches, buttresses and flying buttresses; it soared into 
the sky — carven saint above carven saint, and gargoyles 
leering from every cranny. I could scarcely believe that 
the faith of man had ever reared so lovely a thing. 
What a power religion must have been in those days ! Or 
what a grip this form of art must have taken on the 
imagination of some! To what perfection the art of 
architecture had attained! The loving care that has 
been exercised in designing, shaping and placing these 
stones is enough to stagger the brain. I did not wonder 
when I saw it that Ruskin and Morris had attained to a 
sort of frenzy over the Gothic. It is a thing for sighs 
and tears. Both Barfleur and I walked around it in rev- 
erent silence, and I knew that he was rejoicing. to know 
that I was feeling what I ought to feel. 

We went inside after a time because it was threaten- 
ing dusk and we had to make our train for Paris. I 
shall never forget the vast space within those wondrous 
doors — the world of purple and gold and blue in the 
windows, the blaze of a hundred and more candles upon 
the great altar, the shrines with their votive offerings 
of flaming tapers, the fat waddling mothers in bunchy 
skirts, the heavy priests with shovel hats and pig-like 
faces, the order of attendant sisters in blue collars and 
flaring linen headgear, the worshipful figures scattered 
here and there upon the hard stone floor on their knees. 
The vast space was full of a delicious incense; faint 



EN ROUTE TO PARIS 209 

shadows were already pooling themselves in the arches 
above to blend into a great darkness. Up rose the 
columns, giant redwoods of stone, supporting the far-off 
roof; the glory of pointed windows, the richness of foli- 
ated decorations, the worshipfulness of graven saints set 
in shrines whose details seemed the tendrils of spring. 
Whatever the flower, the fruit, the leaf, the branch, could 
contribute in the way of artistic suggestion had here been 
seized upon. Only the highest order of inspiration could 
have conceived or planned or executed this delicious 
dream in stone. 

A guide, for a franc or two, took us high up into the 
organ-loft and out upon a narrow balustrade leading 
about the roof. Below, all France was spread out; the 
city of Amiens, its contour, was defined accurately. You 
could see some little stream, the Somme, coming into the 
city and leaving it. Wonderful figures of saints and 
devils were on every hand. We were shown a high tower 
in which a treaty between France and Spain had been 
signed. I looked down into the great well of the nave 
inside and saw the candles glowing like gold and the 
people moving like small bugs across the floor. It was 
a splendid confirmation of the majesty of man, the power 
of his ideals, the richness and extent of his imagination, 
the sheer ability of his hands. I would not give up my 
fleeting impression of Amiens for anything that I know. 

As we came away from the cathedral in the dusk we 
walked along some branch or canal of the Somme, and I 
saw for the first time the peculiar kind of boat or punt 
used on French streams — a long affair, stub-pointed at 
either end. It was black and had somewhat the effect of 
a gondola. A Frenchman in baggy corduroy trousers 
and soft wool cap pulled over one ear was poling it along. 
It contained hay piled in a rude mass. It was warm here^ 



210 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

in spite of the fact that it was the middle of January, and 
there was a feeling of spring in the air. Barfleur in- 
formed me that the worst of winter in Paris appeared be- 
tween January fifteenth and the middle of March, that the 
spring did not really show itself until the first of April or 
a little later. 

" You will be coming back by then," he said, " and you 
will see it in all its glory. We will go to Fontainebleau 
and ride." That sounded very promising to me. 

I could not believe that these dull cobble-stone streets 
through which we were passing were part of a city of 
over ninety thousand, and that there was much manu- 
facturing here. There were so few people in sight. It 
had a gray, shut-up appearance — none of the flow and 
spirit of the towns of the American Middle West. It oc- 
curred to me at once that, though I might like to travel 
here, I should never like to live here. Then we reached 
the railway station again. 



CHAPTER XXI 

PARIS ! 

THERE is something about the French nation 
which, in spite of its dreary-looking cities, ex- 
hibits an air of metropoHtan up-to-dateness. 
I don't know where outside of America you will find 
the snap and intensity of emotion, ambition, and romance 
which you find everywhere in French streets. The 
station, when we returned to it, was alive with a 
crowd of bustling, hurrying people, buying books 
and papers at news-stands, looking after their lug- 
gage in the baggage-room, and chattering to the 
ticket-sellers through their windows. A train from 
Paris was just in and they were hurrying to catch that; 
and as I made my first French purchase — twenty cen- 
times' worth of post-cards of Amiens — our train rolled 
in. It was from the North — such a long train as you 
frequently see in America, with cars labeled Milan, 
Trieste, Marseilles, Florence, and Rome. I could hardly 
believe it, and asked Barfleur as he bustled about seeing 
that the luggage was put in the proper carriage, where it 
came from. He thought that some of these cars started 
from St. Petersburg and others from Denmark and Hol- 
land. They had a long run ahead of them yet — over 
thirty hours to Rome, and Paris was just one point in 
their journey. We crowded into one car — stuffy with 
luggage, its windows damp with human breath, various 
nationahties occupying the section — and disposed of our 
grips, portmanteaus, rugs and so on, as best we could. I 
slipped the bustling old factcur a franc — not so much be- 
cause he deserved it, but because he had such a gay and 

211 



212 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

rakish air. His apron swung around his legs Hke a 
skirt, and his accordion-plaited cap was lolling gaily over 
one ear. He waved me a smiling farewell and said some- 
thing in French which I wished I could understand. 
Then I realized for the first time what a pity it is not to 
understand the language of the country in which you 
are traveling. 

As the train sped on through the dark to Paris I fell 
to speculating on the wonders I was to see. Barfleur was 
explaining to me that in order to make my entrance into 
Paris properly gay and interesting, we were to dine at 
the Cafe de Paris and then visit the FoHes-Bergere and 
afterwards have supper at the Abbaye Theleme. 

I should say here that of all people I know Barfleur is 
as capable of creating an atmosphere as any — perhaps 
more so. The man lives so heartily in his moods, he 
sets the stage for his actions long beforehand, and then 
walks on like a good actor and plays his part thoroughly. 
All the way over — from the very first day we met in 
New York, I think — he was either consciously or un- 
consciously building up for me the glamour of smart and 
artistic life in Europe. Now these things are absolutely 
according to your capacity to understand and appreciate 
them; they are, if you please, a figment of the brain, a 
frame of mind. If you love art, if you love history, 
if the romance of sex and beauty enthralls you, Europe in 
places presents tremendous possibilities. To reach these 
ethereal paradises of charm, you must skip and blink and 
dispense with many things. All the long lines of com- 
monplaces through which you journey must be as nothing. 
You buy and prepare and travel and polish and finally 
you reach the center of this thing which is so wonderful ; 
and then, when you get there, it is a figment of your own 
mind. Paris and the Riviera are great realities — there 
are houses and crowds and people and great institutions 



PARIS! 213 

and the remembrance and flavor of great deeds; but the 
thing that you get out of all this for yourself is 
born of the attitude or mood which you take with you. 
Toward gambling, show, romance, a delicious scene, 
Barfleur carries a special mood. Life is only significant 
because of these things. His great struggle is to avoid 
the dingy and the dull, and to escape if possible the 
penalties of encroaching age. I think he looks back on 
the glitter of his youth with a pathetic eye, and I know 
he looks forward into the dark with stoic solemnity. 
Just one hour of beauty, is his private cry, one more day 
of delight. Let the future take care of itself. He real- 
izes, too, with the keenness of a realist, that if youth is 
not most vivid in yourself, it can sometimes be achieved 
through the moods of others. I know he found in me a 
zest and a curiosity and a wonder which he was keen to 
satisfy. Now he would see this thing over as he had 
seen it years before. He would observe me thrill and 
marvel, and so he would be able to thrill and marvel 
himself once more. He clung to me with delicious en- 
thusiasm, and every now and then would say, " Come 
now, what are you thinking? I want to know. I am 
enjoying this as much as you are." He had a delicious 
vivacity which acted on me like wine. 

As we neared Paris he had built this city up so thor- 
oughly in my mood that I am satisfied that I could not 
have seen it with a realistic eye if I had tried. It was 
something — I cannot tell you what — Napoleon, the 
Louvre, the art quarter, Montmartre, the gay restaurants, 
the boulevards, Balzac, Hugo, the Seine and the soldiery, 
a score and a hundred things too numerous to mention 
and all greatly exaggerated. I hoped to see something 
which was perfect in its artistic appearance — exteriorly 
speaking. I expected, after reading George Moore and 
others, a wine-like atmosphere; a throbbing world of 



214 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

gay life; women of exceptional charm of face and dress; 
the bizarre, the unique, the emotional, the spirited. At 
Amiens I had seen enough women entering the trains to 
realize that the dreary commonplace of the English 
woman was gone. Instead the young married women 
that we saw were positively daring compared to what 
England could show — shapely, piquant, sensitive, their 
eyes showing a birdlike awareness of what this world has 
to offer. I fancied Paris would be like that, only more 
so ; and as I look back on it now I can honestly say that 
I was not greatly disappointed. It was not all that I 
thought it would be, but it was enough. It is a gay, 
brilliant, beautiful city, with the spirit of New York 
and more than the distinction of London. It is like a 
brilliant, fragile child — not made for contests and brutal 
battles, but gay beyond reproach. 

When the train rolled into the Gare du Nord it must 
have been about eight o'clock. Barfleur, as usual, was on 
the qui vive for precedence and advantage. He had in- 
dustriously piled all the bags close to the door, and was 
hanging out of a window doing his best to signal a 
facteur. I was to stay in the car and hand all the pack- 
ages down rapidly while he ran to secure a taxi and an 
inspector and in other ways to clear away the impedi- 
ments to our progress. With great executive enthusiasm 
he told me that we must be at the Hotel Normandy by 
eight-fifteen or twenty and that by nine o'clock we must 
be ready to sit down in the Cafe de Paris to an excellent 
dinner which he had ordered by telegraph. 

I recall my wonder in entering Paris — the lack of 
any long extended suburbs, the sudden flash of electric 
lights and electric cars. Mostly we seemed to be enter- 
ing through a tunnel or gully, and then we were there. 
The noisy facteurs in their caps and blue jumpers were all 
around the cars. They ran and chattered and gesticu- 



PARIS! 215 

lated — so unlike the porters in Paddington and Water- 
loo and Victoria and Euston, The one we finally 
secured, a husky little enthusiast, did his best to gather 
all our packages in one grand mass and shoulder them, 
stringing them on a single strap. The result of it was 
that the strap broke right over a small pool of water, and 
among other things the canvas bag containing my blan- 
ket and magnificent shoes fell into the water. " Oh, my 
God," exclaimed Barfleur, " my hat box! " 

" The fool ass," I added, " I knew he would do just 
that — My blanket ! My shoes ! " 

The excited facteur was fairly dancing in anguish, 
doing his best to get the packages strung together. Be- 
tween us we relieved him of about half of them, and 
from about his waist he unwrapped another large strap 
and strung the remainder on that. Then we hurried on 
— for nothing would do but that we must hurry. A 
taxi was secured and all our luggage piled on it. It 
looked half suffocated under bundles as it swung out 
into the street, and we were off at a mad clip through 
crowded, electric-lighted streets. I pressed my nose to 
the window and took in as much as I could, while Bar- 
fleur between calculations as to how much time this would 
take, and that would take, and whether my trunk had 
arrived safely, expatiated laconically on French char- 
acteristics. 

" You smell this air — it is all over Paris." 

" The taxis always go like this." (We were going 
like mad.) 

" There is an excellent type — look at her." 

" Now you see the chairs out in front — they are that 
way all over Paris." 

I was looking at the interesting restaurant life which 
never really seems to be interrupted anywhere in Paris. 
You can always find a dozen chairs somewhere, if not 



2i6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

fifty or a hundred, out on the sidewalk under tlie open 
sky, or a glass roof — little stone-topped tables beside 
them, the crowd surging to and fro in front. Here you 
can sit and have your coffee, your liqueur, your sand- 
wich. Everybody seems to do it — it is as common as 
walking in the streets. 

We whirled through street after street partaking of 
this atmosphere, and finally swung up in front of a 
rather plain hotel which, I learned this same night, was 
close to the Avenue de TOpera, on the corner of the 
Rue St. Honore and the Rue de I'Echelle. Our luggage 
was quickly distributed and I was shown into my room 
by a maid who could not speak English. I unlocked my 
belongings and was rapidly changing my clothes when 
Barfleur, breathing mightily, fully arrayed, appeared to 
say that I should await him at the door below where he 
would arrive with two guests. I did so, and in fifteen 
minutes he returned, the car spinning up out of a steady 
stream that was flowing by. I think my head was dizzy 
with the whirl of impressions which I was garnering, but 
I did my best to keep a sane view of things, and to get my 
impressions as sharp and clear as I could. 

I am quite satisfied of one thing in this world, and 
that is that the commonest intelligence is very frequently 
confused or hypnotized or overpersuaded by certain situ- 
ations, and that the weaker ones are ever full of the 
wildest forms of illusion. We talk about the sanity of 
life — I question whether it exists. Mostly it is a suc- 
cession of confusing, disturbing impressions which are 
only rarely valid. This night I know I was moving in a 
sort of maze, and when I stepped into the car and was 
introduced to the two girls who were with Barfleur, I 
easily succumbed to what was obviously their great 
beauty. 

The artist Greuze has painted the type that I saw be- 



PARIS! 217 

fore me over and over — soft, buxom, ruddy woman- 
hood. I think the two may have been twenty-four and 
twenty-six. The elder was smaller than the younger — 
although both were of good size — and not so ruddy; 
but they were both perfectly plump, round-faced, dim- 
pled, and with a wealth of brownish-black hair, even 
white teeth, smooth plump arms and necks and shoul- 
ders. Their chins were adorably rounded, their lips red, 
and their eyes laughing and gay. They began laughing 
and chattering the moment I entered, extending their 
soft white hands and saying things in French which I 
could not understand. Barfleur was smiling — beaming' 
through his monocle in an amused, superior way. The 
older girl was arrayed in pearl-colored silk with a black 
mantilla spangled with silver, and the younger had a 
dress of peach-blow hue with a white lace mantilla also 
spangled, and they breathed a faint perfume. We were 
obviously in beautiful, if not moral, company. 

I shall never forget the grand air with which this noble 
company entered the Cafe de Paris. Barfleur was 
in fine feather and the ladies radiated a charm and a 
flavor which immediately attracted attention. This bril- 
liant cafe was aglow with lights and alive with people. 
It is not large in size — quite small in fact — and tri- 
angular in shape. The charm of it comes not so much 
from the luxury of the fittings, which are luxurious 
enough, but from their exceeding good taste, and the 
fame of the cuisine. One does not see a bill of fare 
here that indicates prices. You order what you like 
and are charged what is suitable. Champagne is not an 
essential wine as it is in some restaurants — you may 
drink what you like. There is a delicious sparkle and 
spirit to the place which can only spring from a high 
sense of individuality. Paris is supposed to provide 
nothing better than the Cafe de Paris, in so far as food 



2i8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

is concerned. It is as good a place to go for dinner 
as the city provides. 

It amuses me now when I think of how the managerial 
ability of Barfleur had been working through all this. 
As the program had been arranged in his mind, I was to 
take the elder of the two ladies as my partner and he 
had reserved the younger for himself. As a matter of 
fact they were really equally pretty and charming — 
and I was interested in both until, after a few parleys 
and when I had exchanged a few laughing signs with 
the younger, he informed me that she was really closely 
tied up with some one else and was not available. This I 
really did not believe ; but it did not make any particular 
difference. I turned my attention to the elder who was 
quite as vivacious, if not quite so forceful as her younger 
sister. I never knew what it meant before to sit in a 
company of this kind, welcome as a friend, looked to for 
gaiety as a companion and admirer, and yet not able to 
say a word in the language of the occasion. There were 
certain words which could be quickly acquired on an 
occasion of this kind, such as " beautiful," " charming," 
" very delightful," and so on, for which Barfleur gave me 
the French equivalent, and then I could make compli- 
mentary remarks which he would translate for all, and 
the ladies would say things in reply which would come 
to me by the same medium. It went gaily enough — 
for the conversation would not have been of a high order 
if I had been able to speak French. Barfleur objected to 
being used constantly as an interpreter, and when he be- 
came stubborn and chattered gaily without stopping to 
explain, I was compelled to fall back on the resources of 
looks and smiles and gestures. It interested me to see 
how quick these women were to adapt themselves to the 
difficulties of the situation. They were constantly 
laughing and chaffing between themselves — looking at 



PARIS! 219 

me and saying obviously flattering things, and then 
laughing at my discomfiture in not being able to under- 
stand. The elder explained what certain objects were 
by lifting them up and insisting on the French name. 
Barfleur was constantly telling me of the compliments they 
made and how sad they thought it was that I could not 
speak French. We departed finally for the Folies- 
Bergere where the newest sensation of Paris, Mistin- 
guett, was playing. She proved to be a brilliant hoyden 
to look upon; a gay, slim, yellow-haired tomboy who 
seemed to fascinate the large audience by her boyish 
manners and her wayward air. There was a brilliant 
chorus in spangled silks and satins, and finally a beautiful 
maiden without any clothing at all who was cloaked by 
the soldiery of the stage before she had half crossed it. 
The vaudeville acts were about as good as they are any- 
where. I did not think that the performance was any 
better than one might see in one or two places in New 
York, but of course the humor was much broader. Now 
and then one of their remarkable bons mots was trans- 
lated for me by Barfleur just to give me an inkhng of the 
character of the place. Back of the seats was a great 
lobby or promenade where a fragment of the demi- 
monde of Paris was congregated — beautiful creatures, 
in many instances, and as unconventional as you please. 
I was particularly struck with the smartness of their 
costumes and the cheerful character of their faces. The 
companion type in London and New York is somewhat 
colder-looking. Their eyes snapped with Gallic intelli- 
gence, and they walked as though the whole world held 
their point of view and no other. 

From here at midnight we left for the Abbaye 
Theleme; and there I encountered the best that Paris 
has to show in the way of that gaiety and color and 
beauty and smartness for which it is famous. One 



220 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

really ought to say a great deal about the Abbaye 
Theleme, because it is the last word, the quintessence of 
midnight excitement and international savoir faire. The 
Russian and the Brazilian, the Frenchman, the Ameri- 
can, the Englishman, the German and the Italian all 
meet here on common ground. I saw much of restau- 
rant life in Paris while I was there, but nothing better 
than this. Like the Cafe de Paris it was small — very 
small — when compared to restaurants of similar repute 
in New York and London. I fancy it was not more 
than sixty feet square — only it was not square but 
pentagonal, almost circular. The tables, to begin with, 
went round the walls, with seats which had the wall 
for a back; and then, as the guests poured in, the in- 
terior space was filled up with tables which were brought 
in for the purpose; and, later in the morning, when the 
guests began to leave, these tables were taken out again, 
and the space devoted to dancing and entertainers. 

As in the Cafe de Paris I noticed that it was not so 
much the quality of the furnishings as the spirit of the 
place which was important. This latter was compounded 
of various elements — success, perfection of service, ab- 
solute distinction of cooking, and lastly the subtlety and 
magnetism of sex which is capitalized and used in Paris 
as it is nowhere else in the world. I never actually re- 
alized until I stepped into this restaurant what it is that 
draws a certain moneyed element to Paris. The Tomb 
of Napoleon and the Pantheon and the Louvre are not 
the significant attractions of that important city. Those 
things have their value — they constitute an historical 
and artistic element that is appealing, romantic and force- 
ful. But over and above that there is something else — 
and that is sex. I did not learn what I am going to say 
now until later, but it might as well be said here, for it 
illustrates the point exactly. A little experience and in- 



PARIS! 221 

quiry in Paris quickly taught me that the owners and 
managers of the more successful restaurants encourage 
and help to sustain a certain type of woman whose pres- 
ence is desirable. She must be young, beautiful, or at- 
tractive, and above all things possessed of temperament. 
A woman can rise in the cafe and restaurant world of 
Paris quite as she can on the stage; and she can easily 
graduate from the Abbaye Theleme and Maxim's to the 
stage, though the path is villainous. On the other hand, 
the stage contributes freely to the atmosphere of Maxim's, 
the Abbaye Theleme, and other restaurants of their kind. 
A large number of the figures seen here and at the Folies- 
Bergere and other places of the same type, are inter- 
changeable. They are in the restaurants when they are 
not on the stage, and they are on the stage when they are 
not in the restaurants. They rise or fall by a world of 
strange devices, and you can hear brilliant or ghastly 
stories illustrating either conclusion. Paris — this as- 
pect of it — is a perfect maelstrom of sex; and it is 
sustained by the wealth and the curiosity of the stranger, 
as well as the Frenchman. 

The Abbaye Theleme on this occasion presented a 
brilliant scene. The carpet, as I recall it, was a rich 
green velvet; the walls a lavender- white. From the 
ceiling six magnificently prismed electroliers were sus- 
pended — three glowing with a clear peach-blow hue 
and three with a brilliant white. Outside a small 
railing near the door several negro singers, a man- 
dolin and a guitar-player, several stage dancers, and 
others were congregated. A perfect storm of people 
was pouring through the doors — all with their tables 
previously arranged for. Out in the lobby, where a Jan- 
uary wind was blowing, you could hear a wild uproar 
of slamming taxi doors, and the calls of doormen and 
chauffeurs getting their vehicles in and out of the way. 



222 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

The company generally, as on all such occasions, was 
on the qui vive to see who else were present and what 
the general spirit of the occasion was to be. Instantly 
I detected a number of Americans; three amazingly 
beautiful English women, such as I never saw in Eng- 
land, and their escorts ; a few Spaniards or South Amer- 
icans; and, after that, a variety of individuals whom 
I took to be largely French, although it was impossible 
to tell. The English women interested me because, dur- 
ing all my stay in Europe, I never saw three other 
women quite so beautiful, and because, during all my 
stay in England, I scarcely saw a good-looking English 
woman. Barfleur suggested that they were of that high 
realm of fashion which rarely remains in London dur- 
ing the winter season — when I was there ; that if I 
came again in May or June and went to the races I 
would see plenty of them. Their lovely hair was straw- 
colored and their cheeks and foreheads a faint pink and 
cream. Their arms and shoulders were delightfully 
bare, and they carried themselves with amazing hauteur. 
By one o'clock, when the majority of the guests had 
arrived, this room fairly shimmered with white silks and 
satins, white arms and shoulders, roses in black hair and 
blue and lavender ribbons fastened about coiffures of 
lighter complexion. There were jewels in plenty — 
opals and amethysts and turquoises and rubies — and 
there was a perfect artillery of champagne corks. Every 
table was attended by its silver bucket of ice; and the 
mandolins and guitars in their crowded angle were strum- 
ming mightily. 

I speculated interestedly as we seated ourselves as to 
what drew all these people from all parts of the world 
to see this, to be here together. Barfleur was eager to 
come here first and to have me see this, without delay. 
I do not know where you could go, and for a hundred 



PARIS! 223 

francs see more of really amazing feminine beauty. I do 
not know where for the same money you could buy the 
same atmosphere of lightness and gaiety and enthusiasm. 
This place was fairly vibrating with a wild desire to live. 
I fancy the majority of those who were here for the 
first time — particularly of the young — would tell you 
that they would rather be here than in any other spot 
you could name. The place had a peculiar glitter of 
beauty which was compounded by the managers with 
great skill. The waiters were all of them deft, swift, 
suave, good-looking; the dancers who stepped out on the 
floor after a few moments were of an orchid-like Span- 
ish type — ruddy, brown, full-bodied, black-haired, black- 
eyed. They had on dresses that were as close fitting 
as the scales of a fish and that glittered with the same 
radiance. They waved and rattled and clashed castanets 
and tambourines and danced wildly and sinuously to and 
fro among the tables. Some of them sang, or voices 
accompanied them from the raised platform devoted to 
music. 

After a while red, blue, pink and green balloons were 
introduced, anchored to the champagne bottles, and al- 
lowed to float gaily in the air. Paper parcels of small 
paste balls of all colors, as light as feathers, were dis- 
tributed for the guests to throw at one another. In 
ten minutes a wild artillery battle was raging. Young 
girls were up on their feet, their hands full of these col- 
ored weapons, pelting the male strangers of their selec- 
tion. You would see tall Englishmen and Americans 
exchanging a perfect volley of colored spheres with girls 
of various nationalities, laughing, chattering, calling, 
screaming. The cocotte in all her dazzling radiance was 
here — exquisitely dressed, her white arms shimmering, 
perfectly willing to strike up an understanding with the 
admirer who was pelting her. 



224 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

After a time, when the audience had worn itself 
through fever and frenzy to satisfaction or weariness, 
or both, a few of the tables were cleared away and the 
dancing began, occasional guests joining. There were 
charming dances in costume from Russia, from Scot- 
land, from Hungary, and from Spain. I had the wonder 
of seeing an American girl rise from her table and dance 
with more skill and grace than the employed talent. A 
wine-enthused Englishman took the floor, a handsome 
youth of twenty-six or eight, and remained there gaily 
prancing about from table to table, dancing alone or with 
whomsoever would welcome him. What looked like a 
dangerous argument started at one time because some 
high-mettled Brazilian considered that he had been 
insulted. A cordon of waiters and the managers soon 
adjusted that. It was between three and four in the 
morning when we finally left; and I was very tired. 

It was decided that we should meet for dinner; and 
since it was almost daylight I was glad when we had 
seen our ladies to their apartment and returned to the 
hotel. 



CHAPTER XXII 

A MORNING IN PARIS 

I SHALL never forget my first morning in Paris — 
the morning that I woke up after about two hours' 
sleep or less, prepared to put in a hard day at sight- 
seeing because Barfleur had a program which must be 
adhered to, and because he could only be with me until 
Monday, when he had to return. It was a bright day, 
fortunately, a little hazy and chill, but agreeable. I 
looked out of the window of my very comfortable room 
on the fifth floor which gave out on a balcony overhang- 
ing the Rue St. Honore, and watched the crowd of 
French people below coming to shop or to work. It 
would be hard to say what makes the difference between 
a crowd of Englishmen and a crowd of Frenchmen, but 
there is a difference. It struck me that these French men 
and women walked faster and that their every movement 
was more spirited than either that of the English or the 
Americans. They looked more like Americans, though, 
than like the English ; and they were much more cheerful 
than either, chatting and talking as they came. I w^as in- 
terested to see whether I could make the maid understand 
that I wanted coffee and rolls without talking French, 
but the wants of American travelers are an old story to 
French maids; and no sooner did I say cafe and make 
the sign of drinking from a cup than she said, " Oh, oui, 
oui, oui — oh, oui, oui, oui!" and disappeared. Pres- 
ently the coffee was brought me — and rolls and butter 
and hot milk; and I ate my breakfast as I dressed. 
About nine o'clock Barfleur arrived with his program. 

I was to walk in the Tuileries — which is close at hand 

225 



226 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

— while he got a shave. We were to go for a walk 
in the Rue de Rivoli as far as a certain bootmaker's, 
who was to make me a pair of shoes for the Riviera. 
Then we were to visit a haberdasher's or two; and after 
that go straight about the work of sight-seeing — visit- 
ins: the old bookstalls on the Seine, the churches of St.- 
£tienne-du-Mont, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, stopping 
at Foyot's for lunch; and thereafter regulating our con- 
duct by the wishes of several guests who were to ap- 
pear — Miss N. and Mr. McG., two neo-impressionist 
artists, and a certain Mme. de B., who would not mind 
showing me around Paris if I cared for her company. 

We started off quite briskly, and my first adventure 
in Paris led me straight to the gardens of the Tuileries, 
lying west of the Louvre. If any one wanted a proper 
introduction to Paris, I should recommend this above all 
others. Such a noble piece of gardening as this is the 
best testimony France has to offer of its taste, dis- 
crimination, and sense of the magnificent. I should say, 
on mature thought, that we shall never have anything 
like it in America. We have not the same lightness 
of fancy. And, besides, the Tuileries represents a classic 
period. I recall walking in here and being struck at 
once with the magnificent proportions of it all — the 
breadth and stately lengths of its walks, the utter won- 
der and charm of its statuary — snow-white marble nudes 
standing out on the green grass and marking the circles, 
squares and paths of its entire length. No such charm 
and beauty could be attained in America because we 
would not permit the public use of the nude in this fash- 
ion. Only the fancy of a monarch could create a realm 
such as this; and the Tuileries and the Place du Car- 
rousel and the Place de la Concorde and the whole stretch 
of lovely tree-lined walks and drives that lead to the Arc 
de Triomphe and give into the Bois de Boulogne speak 



A MORNING IN PARIS 227 

loudly of a noble fancy untrammeled by the dictates of 
an inartistic public opinion. I was astonished to find 
how much of the heart of Paris is devoted to public usage 
in this manner. It corresponds, in theory at least, to 
the space devoted to Central Park in New York — but 
this is so much more beautiful, or at least it is so much 
more in accord with the spirit of Paris. These splendid 
walks, devoted solely to the idling pedestrian, and set 
with a hundred sculptural fancies in marble, show the 
gay, pleasure-loving character of the life which created 
them. The grand monarchs of France knew what 
beauty was, and they had the courage and the taste to 
fulfil their desires. I got just an inkling of it all in the 
fifteen minutes that I walked here in the morning sun, 
waiting for Barfleur to get his shave. 

From here we went to a Paris florist's where Madame 
pinned bright boutonnieres on our coats, and thence to 
the bootmaker's where Madame again assisted her hus- 
band in the conduct of his business. Everywhere I went 
in Paris I was struck by this charming unity in the con- 
duct of business between husband and wife and son and 
daughter. We talk much about the economic inde- 
pendence of women in America. It seems to me that 
the French have solved it in the only way that it can 
be solved. Madame helps her husband in his business 
and they make a success of it together. Monsieur Ga- 
loyer took the measurements for my shoes, but Madame 
entered them in a book; and to me the shop was fifty 
times as charming for her presence. She was pleasingly 
dressed, and the shop looked as though It had experienced 
the tasteful touches of a woman's hand. It was clean and 
bright and smart, and smacked of good housekeeping ; and 
this was equally true of bookstalls, haberdashers' shops, 
art-stores, coffee-rooms, and places of public sale gener- 
ally. Wherever Madame was, and she looked nice, 



228 



A T^VELER AT FORTY 



there was a nice store; and Monsieur looked as fat and 
contented as could reasonably be expected under the cir- 
cumstances. 

From Galoyer's we struck forth to Paris proper, its 
most interesting features, and I recall now with delight 
how fresh and trig and spick it all seemed. Paris has an 
air, a presence, from the poorest cjuarter of the Charenton 
district to the perfections of the Bois and the region 
about the Arc de Triomphe. It chanced that the day 
was bright and I saw the Seine, as bright as new buttons 
glimmering over the stones of its shallow banks and rac- 
ing madly. If not a majestic stream it is at least a gay 
and dashing one — quick-tempered, rapid-flowing, artis- 
tically walled, crossed by a score of handsome bridges, 
and ornamented in every possible way. How much the 
French have made of so little in the way of a river ! It is 
not very wide — about one-half as wide as the Thames 
at Black friars Bridge and not so wide as the Harlem 
River which makes Manhattan an island. I followed it 
from city wall to city wall one day, from Charenton to 
Issy, and found every inch of it delightful. I was never 
tired of looking at the wine barges near Charenton; the 
little bathing pavilions and passenger boats in the vicinity 
of the Louvre; the brick-barges, hay-barges, coal-barges 
and Heaven knows what else plying between the city's 
heart and points downstream past Issy. It gave me the 
impression of being one of the brightest, cleanest rivers 
in the world — a river on a holiday. I saw it once at 
Issy at what is known in Paris as the " green hour " — 
which is five o'clock — when the sun was going down 
and a deep palpable fragrance wafted from a vast manu- 
factory of perfume filled the air. Men were poling boats 
of hay and laborers in their great wide-bottomed cordu- 
roy trousers, blue shirts and inimitable French caps, were 
trudging homewards, and I felt as though the world had 



^ 











l^- -_- ~.v 










^.^ \ 



S':a^i\v 



A MORNING IN PARIS 229 

nothing to offer Paris which it did not already have — 
even the joy of simple labor amid great beauty. I could 
have settled in a small house in Issy and worked as a 
laborer in a perfume factory, carrying my dinner pail 
with me every morning, with a right good-will — or such 
was the mood of the moment. 

This morning, on our way to St.-£tienne-du-Mont 
and the cathedral, we examined the bookstalls along 
the Seine and tried to recall off-hand the interest- 
ing comment that had been made on them by great 
authors and travelers. My poor wit brought back only 
the references of Balzac ; but Barfleur was livelier with 
thoughts from Rousseau to George Moore. They have 
a magnificent literary history ; but it is only because they 
are on the banks of the Seine, in the center of this whirl- 
ing pageant of life, that they are so delighted. To enjoy 
them one has to be in an idle mood and love out-of-doors ; 
for they consist of a dusty row of four-legged boxes with 
lids coming cjuite to your chest in height, and reminding 
one of those high-legged counting-tables at which clerks 
sit on tall stools making entries in their ledgers. These 
boxes are old and paintless and weather-beaten; and at 
night the very dusty-looking keepers, who from early 
morning until dark have had their shabby-backed wares 
spread out where dust and sunlight and wind and rain 
can attack them, pack them in the body of the box on 
which they are lying and close the lid. You can always 
see an idler or two here — perhaps many idlers — be- 
tween the Quai d'Orsay and the Quai Voltaire. 

We made our way through the Rue Mazarin and Rue 
de I'Ancienne Comedie into that region which surrounds 
the ficole de Medecin and the Luxembourg. In his en- 
thusiastic way Barfleur tried to indicate to me that I was 
in the most historic section of the left bank of the Seine, 
where were St.-£tienne-du-Mont, the Pantheon, the Sor- 



230 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

bonne, the Luxembourg, the ficole des Beaux-Arts and 
the Latin Quarter, ^^'e came for a Httle way into the 
Boulevard St. -Michel, and there I saw my first artists 
in velvet suits, long hair, and broad-brimmed hats; but 
I was told that they were poseurs — the kind of artist 
who is so by profession, not by accomplishment. They 
were poetic-looking youths — the two that I saw swing- 
ing along together — with pale faces and slim hands. 
I was informed that the type had almost entirely dis- 
appeared and that the art student of to-day prefers to 
be distinctly inconspicuous. From what I saw of them 
later I can confirm this; for the schools which I visited 
revealed a type of boy and girl who, while being roman- 
tic enough, in all conscience, were nevertheless incon- 
spicuously dressed and very simple and off-hand in their 
manner. I visited this region later with artists who 
had made a name for themselves In the radical world, 
and with students who were hoping to make a name 
for themselves — sitting in their cafes, examining 
their studios, and sensing the atmosphere of their 
streets and public amusements. There is an art at- 
mosphere, strong and clear, compounded of romance, 
emotion, desire, love of beauty and determination of pur- 
pose, which is thrilling to experience — even vicariously. 
Paris is as young in its mood as any city in the world. 
It is as wildly enthusiastic as a child. I noticed here, 
this morning, the strange fact of old battered-look- 
ing fellows singing to themselves, which I never noticed 
anywhere else in this world. Age sits lightly on the Paris- 
Ian, I am sure; and youth Is a mad fantasy, an exciting 
realm of romantic dreams. The Parisian — from the 
keeper of a market-stall to the prince of the money 
world, or of art — wants to live gaily, briskly, laugh- 
ingly, and he will not let the necessity of earning his 
living deny him. I felt it in the churches, the depots, 



A MORNING IN PARIS 231 

the department stores, the theaters, the restaurants, the 
streets — a wild, keen desire for hfe with the blood and 
the body to back it up. It must be in the soil and the 
air, for Paris sings. It is like poison in the veins, and 
I felt myself growing positively giddy with enthusiasm. 
I beheve that for the first six months Paris would be 
a disease from which one would suffer greatly and re- 
cover slowly. After that you would settle down to live 
the life you found there in contentment and with de- 
light; but you would not be in so much danger of 
wrecking your very mortal body and your uncertainly 
immortal soul. 

I was interested in this neighborhood, as we hurried 
through and away from it to the Ile-de-la-Cite and Notre- 
Dame, as being not only a center for art strugglers of 
the Latin Quarter, but also for students of the Sorbonne. 
I was told that there were thousands upon thousands of 
them from various countries — eight thousand from Rus- 
sia alone. How they live my informant did not seem to 
know, except that in the main they lived very badly. 
Baths, clean linen, and three meals a day, according to 
him, were not at all common; and in the majority of 
instances they starve their way through, going back to 
their native countries to take up the practice of law, 
medicine, poHtics and other professions. After Oxford 
and the American universities, this region and the Sor- 
bonne itself, I found anything but attractive. 

The church of St.-£tienne-du-Mont is as fine as pos- 
sible, a type of the kind of architecture which is no type 
and ought to have a new name — modern would be as 
good as any. It has a creamish-gray effect, exceedingly 
ornate, with all the artificery of a jewel box. 

The Pantheon seemed strangely bare to me, large and 
spacious but cold. The men who are not there as much 
as the men who are, made it seem somewhat unrepresent- 



2Z2 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ative to me as a national mausoleum. It is hard to make 
a national burying-ground that will appeal to all. 

Notre-Dame after Canterbury and Amiens seems a 
little hea\y but as contrasted with St. Paul's in London 
and anything existing in America, it seemed strangely 
wonderful. I could not help thinking of Hugo's novel 
and of St. Louis and Napoleon and the French Revolu- 
tion in connection with it. It is so heavy and somber 
and so sadly great. The Hotel Dieu, the Palais de 
Justice, Sainte-Chapelle and the Pont-Saint-Michel all 
in the same neighborhood interested me much, particu- 
larly Sainte-Chapelle — to me one of the most charming 
exteriors and interiors I saw in Paris. It is exquisite 
• — ^this chapel which was once the scene of the private 
prayers of a king. This whole neighborhood somehow 
— from the bookstalls to Sainte-Chapelle suggested 
Balzac and Hugo and the flavor of this world as they 
presented it, was in my mind. 

And now there was luncheon at Foyot's, a little restau- 
rant near the Luxembourg and the Musee de Cluny, where 
the wise in the matter of food love to dine and where, as 
usual, Barfleur was at his best. The French, while dis- 
carding show in many instances entirely, and allowing 
their restaurant chambers to look as though they had been 
put together with an effort, nevertheless attain a perfec- 
tion of atmosphere which is astonishing. For the life of 
me I could not tell why this little restaurant seemed so 
bright, for there was nothing smart about it when you 
examined it in detail ; and so I was compelled to attribute 
this impression to the probably all-pervading tempera- 
ment of the owner. Always, in these cases, there is a 
man (or a woman) quite remarkable for his point of 
view. Otherwise you could not take such simple ap- 
pointments and make them into anything so pleasing and 
so individual. A luncheon which had been ordered by 



A MORNING IN PARIS 233 

telephone was now served; and at the beginning of its 
gastronomic wonders Mr. McG. and Miss N. arrived. 
I shall not soon forget the interesting temperaments 
of these two; for even more than great institutions, 
persons who come reasonably close to you make up the 
atmosphere of a city. Mr. McG. was a solid, sandy, 
steady-eyed Scotchman who looked as though, had he 
not been an artist, he might have been a kilted soldier, 
swinging along with the enviable Scotch stride. Miss 
N. was a delightfully Parisianized American, without 
the slightest affectation, however, so far as I could make 
out, of either speech or manner. She was pleasingly 
good-looking, with black hair, a healthy, rounded face 
and figure, and a cheerful, good-natured air. There was 
no sense of either that aggressiveness or superiority 
which so often characterizes the female artist. We 
launched at once upon a discussion of Paris, London and 
New York and upon the delights of Paris and the prog- 
ress of the neo-impressionist cult. I could see plainly 
that these two did not care to force their connection 
with that art development on my attention; but I was 
interested to know of it. There was something so solid 
and self-reliant about Mr. McG. that before the meal was 
over I had taken a fancy to him. He had the least sug- 
gestion of a Scotch burr in his voice which might have 
said "awaw" instead of away and " doon " instead of 
down ; but it resulted in nothing so broad as that. They 
immediately gave me lists of restaurants that I must see 
in the Latin Quarter and asked me to come with them 
to the Cafe d'Harcourt and to Bullier's to dance and to 
some of the brasseries to see what they were like. Be- 
tween two and three Mr. McG. left because of an errand, 
and Barfleur and I accompanied Miss N. to her studio 
close by the gardens of the Luxembourg. This public 
garden which, not unlike the Tuileries on the other side of 



234 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

the Seine, was set with charming statues, embelhshecl by 
a magnificent fountain, and aHve with French nursemaids 
and their charges, idling Parisians in cutaways and der- 
bies, and a smart world of pedestrians generally im- 
pressed me greatly. It was lovel}^ The wonder of 
Paris, as I was discovering, was that, walk where you 
would, it was hard to escape the sense of breadth, space, 
art, history, romance and a lovely sense of lightness and 
enthusiasm for life. 

Miss N.'s studio is in the Rue Defifert-Rochereau. In 
calling here I had my first taste of the Paris concierge, 
the janitress who has an eye on all those who come and 
go and to whom all not having keys must apply. In 
many cases, as I learned, keys are not given to the outer 
gate or door. One must ring and be admitted. This 
gives this person a complete espionage over the affairs 
of all the tenants, mail, groceries, guests, purchases, 
messages — anything and everything. If you have a 
charming concierge, it is well and good; if not, not. 
The thought of anything so offensive as a spying con- 
cierge irritated me greatly and I found myself running 
forward in my mind picking fights with some possible 
concierge who might at some remote date possibly 
trouble me. Of such is the contentious disposition. 

The studio of Mr. McG., in the Boulevard Raspail, 
overlooks a lovely garden — a heavenly place set with 
trees and flowers and reminiscent of an older day in the 
bits of broken stone-work lying about, and suggesting 
the architecture of a bygone period. His windows, 
reaching from floor to ceiling and supplemented by ex- 
terior balconies, were overhung by trees. In both 
studios were scores of canvases done in the neo-impres- 
sionistic style which interested me profoundly. 

It is one thing to see neo-impressionism hung upon the 
walls of a gallery in London, or disputed over in a West 



A MORNING IN PARIS 235 

End residence. It is quite another to come upon it fresh 
from the easel in the studio of the artist, or still in pro- 
cess of production, defended by every thought and prin- 
ciple of which the artist is capable. In Miss N.'s studio 
were a series of decorative canvases intended for the 
walls of a great department store in America which were 
done in the raw reds, yellows, blues and greens of the 
neo-impressionist cult — flowers which stood out with 
the coarse distinctness of hollyhocks and sunflowers; 
architectural outlines which were as sharp as those of 
rough buildings, and men and women whose details of 
dress and feature were characterized by colors which by 
the uncultivated eye would be pronounced unnatural. 

For me they had an immense appeal if for nothing 
more than that they represented a development and an 
individual point of view. It is so hard to break tradition. 

It was the same in the studio of Mr. McG. to which we 
journeyed after some three-quarters of an hour. Of the 
two painters, the man seemed to me the more forceful. 
Miss N. worked in a softer mood, with more of what 
might be called an emotional attitude towards life. 

During all this, Barfleur was in the heyday of his 
Parisian glory, and appropriately cheerful. We took 
a taxi through singing streets lighted by a springtime 
sun and came finally to the Restaurant Prunier where 
it was necessary for him to secure a table and order 
dinner in advance; and thence to the Theatre des 
Capucines in the Rue des Capucines, where tickets for a 
farce had to be secured, and thence to a bar near the 
Avenue de I'Opera where we were to meet the previously 
mentioned Mme. de B. who, out of the goodness of her 
heart, was to help entertain me while I was in the city. 

This remarkable woman who by her beauty, simplicity, 
utter frankness, and moody immorality would shock the 
average woman into a deadly fear of life and make 



236 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

a horror of what seems a gaudy pleasure world to 
some, quite instantly took my fancy. Yet I think it was 
more a matter of Mme. de B.'s attitude, than it was 
the things which she did, which made it so terrible. 
But that is a long story. 

We came to her out of the whirl of the " green hour," 
when the Paris boulevards in this vicinity were fairly 
swarming with people — the gayest world I have ever 
seen. We have enormous crowds in New York, but 
they seem to be going somewhere very much more defi- 
nitely than in Paris. With us there is an eager, stri- 
dent, almost objectionable effort to get home or to the 
theater or to the restaurant which one can easily resent 
— it is so inconsiderate and indifferent. In London you 
do not feel that there are any crowds that are going 
to the theaters or the restaurants ; and if they are, they 
are not very cheerful about it; they are enduring life; 
they have none of the lightness of the Parisian world. 
I think it is all explained by the fact that Parisians feel 
keenly that they are living now and that they wish to 
enjoy themselves as they go. The American and the 
Englishman — the Englishman much more than the 
American — have decided that they are going to live in 
the future. Only the American is a little angry about 
his decision and the Englishman a little meek or pa- 
tient. They both feel that life is intensely grim. But 
the Parisian, while he may feel or believe it, decides 
wilfully to cast it off. He lives by the way, out of 
books, restaurants, theaters, boulevards, and the spec- 
tacle of life generally. The Parisians move briskly, and 
they come out where they can see each other — out into 
the great wide-sidewalked boulevards and the thousands 
upon thousands of cafes; and make themselves com- 
fortable and talkative and gay on the streets. It is so 
obvious that everybody is having a good time — not try- 




M 



A MORNING IN PARIS 237 

ing to have it; that they are enjoying the wine-like air, 
the cordials and aperitifs of the brasseries, the net-like 
movements of the cabs, the dancing lights of the road- 
ways, and the flare of the shops. It may be chill or 
drizzling in Paris, but you scarcely feel it. Rain can 
scarcely drive the people off the streets. Literally it 
does not. There are crowds whether it rains or not, 
and they are not despondent. This particular hour that 
brought us to G.'s Bar was essentially thrilling, and I 
was interested to see what Mme. de B. was like. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THREE GUIDES 

IT was only by intuition, and by asking many ques- 
tions, that at times I could extract the significance 
of certain places from Barfleur as quickly as I 
wished. He was always reticent or a little cryptic in his 
allusions. In this instance I gathered rapidly however 
that this bar was a very extraordinary little restaurant 
presided over by a woman of a most pleasant and prac- 
tical type. She could not have been much over forty — • 
buxom, good-looking, self-reliant, efficient. She moved 
about the two rooms which constituted her restaurant, in 
so far as the average diner was concerned, with an air 
of considerable social importance. Her dresses, as I 
noticed on my several subsequent visits, were always 
sober, but in excellent taste. About this time of day 
the two rooms were a little dark, the electric lights be- 
ing reserved for the more crowded hours. Yet there 
were always a few people here. This evening when we 
entered I noticed a half-dozen men and three or four 
young women lounging here in a preliminary way, con- 
suming aperitifs and chatting sociably. I made out by 
degrees that the mistress of this place had a following 
of a kind, in the Parisian scheme of things — that cer- 
tain men and women came here for reasons of good- 
fellowship ; and that she would take a certain type of 
struggling maiden, if she were good-looking and ambi- 
tious and smart, under her wing. The girl would have 
to know how to dress well, to be able to carry herself 
with an air; and when money was being spent very 
freely by an admirer it might as well be spent at this 

238 



THREE GUIDES 239 

bar on occasion as anywhere else. There was obviously 
an entente cordiale between Madame G. and all the 
young women who came in here. They seemed so much 
at home that it was quite like a family party. Every- 
body appeared to be genial, cheerful, and to know 
everybody else. To enter here was to feel as though 
you had lived in Paris for years. 

While we are sitting at a table sipping a brandy and 
soda, enter Mme. de B., the brisk, genial, sympathetic 
French personage whose voice on the instant gave me a 
delightful impression of her. It was the loveliest voice 
I have ever heard, soft and musical, a colorful voice 
touched with both gaiety and sadness. Her eyes were 
light blue, her hair brown and her manner sinuous and 
insinuating. She seemed to have the spirit of a delight- 
fully friendly collie dog or child and all the gaiety and 
alertness that goes with either. 

After I had been introduced, she laughed, and put- 
ting aside her muff and stole, shook herself into a 
comfortable position in a corner and accepted a brandy 
and soda. She was so interested for the moment, 
exchanging whys and wherefores with Barfleur, that 
I had a chance to observe her keenly. In a mo- 
ment she turned to me and wanted to know whether 
I knew either of two American authors whom she knew 
— men of considerable repute. Knowing them both 
very well, it surprised me to think that she knew them. 
She seemed, from the way she spoke, to have been on 
the friendliest terms with both of them; and any one 
by looking at her could have understood why they should 
have taken such an interest in her. 

" Now, you know, that Mistaire N., he is very nice. 
I was very fond of him. And Mistaire R., he is clever, 
don't you think? " 

I admitted at once that they were both very able men 



240 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and that I was glad that she knew them. She informed 
me that she had known Mr. R. and Mr. N. in London 
and that she had there perfected her Enghsh, which 
was very good indeed. Barfleur explained in full who 
I was and how long I would be in Paris and that he had 
written her from America because he wanted her to show 
me some attention during my stay in Paris. 

If Mme. de B. had been of a somewhat more calculat- 
ing type I fancy that, with her intense charm of face 
and manner and her intellect and voice, she would have 
been very successful. I gained the impression that she 
had been on the stage in some small capacity; but 
she had been too diffident — not really brazen enough — 
for the grim world in which the French actress rises. 
I soon found that Mme. de B. was a charming blend 
of emotion, desire, and refinement which had strayed 
into the wrong field. She would have done better in 
literature or music or art; and she seemed fitted by her 
moods and her understanding to be a light in any one 
of them or all. Some temperaments are so — missing by 
a fraction what they would give all the world to have. 
It is the little things that do it — the fractions, the bits, 
the capacity for taking pains in little things that make, 
as so many have said, the difference between success and 
failure and it is true. 

I shall never forget how she looked at me, quite 
in the spirit of a gay uncertain child, and how quickly 
she made me feel that we would get along very well 
together. " Why, yes," she said quite easily in her 
soft voice, " I will go about with you, although I would 
not know what is best to see. But I shall be here, and 
if you want to come for me we can see things together." 
Suddenly she reached over and took my hand and 
squeezed it genially, as though to seal the bargain. We 
had more drinks to celebrate this rather festive occa- 



THREE GUIDES 241 

sion; and then Mme. de B., promising to join us at the 
theater, went away. It was high time then to dress for 
dinner ; and so we returned to the hotel. We ate a com- 
panionable meal, watching the Parisian and his lady 
love (or his wife) arrive in droves and dine with that 
gusto and enthusiasm which is so characteristic of the 
French. 

When we came out of this theater at half after eleven, 
Mme. de B. was anxious to return to her apartment, and 
Barfleur was anxious to give me an extra taste of the 
varied cafe life of Paris in order that I might be able 
to contrast and compare intelligently. "If you know 
where they are and see whether you like them, you can 
tell whether you want to see any more of them — which 
I hope you won't," said he wisely, leading the way 
through a swirling crowd that was for all the world like 
a rushing tide of the sea. 

There are no traffic laws in Paris, so far as I could 
make out; vehicles certainly have the right-of-way and 
they go like mad. I have read of the Parisian authori- 
ties having imported a London policeman to teach Paris 
police the art of traffic regulation, but if so, the in- 
struction has been wasted. This night was a bedlam 
of vehicles and people. A Paris guide, one of the tribe 
that conducts the morbid stranger through scenes that 
are supposedly evil, and that I know from observation 
to be utterly vain, approached us in the Bouelvard des 
Capucines with the suggestion that he be allowed to 
conduct us through a realm of filthy sights, some of 
which he catalogued. I could give a list of them if I 
thought any human organization would ever print them, 
or that any individual would ever care to read them — 
which I don't. I have indicated before that Barfleur is 
essentially clean-minded. He is really interested in the 
art of the demi-mondaine, and the spectacle which their 



242 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

showy and, to a certain extent, artistic lives present; 
but no one in this world ever saw more clearly through 
the shallow make-believe of this realm than he does. He 
contents himself with admiring the art and the tragedy 
and the pathos of it. This world of women interests 
him as a phase of the struggle for existence, and for 
the artistic pretense which it sometimes compels. To 
him the vast majority of these women in Paris w^ere 
artistic — whatever one might say for their morals, their 
honesty, their brutality and the other qualities which 
they possess or lack; and whatever they were, life made 
them so — conditions over which their temperaments, 
understandings and wills had little or no control. He is 
an amazingly tolerant man — one of the most tolerant I 
have ever known, and kindly in his manner and inten- 
tion. 

Nevertheless, he has an innate horror of the purely 
physical when it descends to inartistic brutality. There 
is much of that in Paris; and these guides advertise it; 
but it is filth especially arranged for the stranger. I 
fancy the average Parisian knows nothing about it ; and 
if he does, he has a profound contempt for it. So has 
the well-intentioned stranger, but there is always an 
audience for this sort of thing. So when this guide 
approached us with the proposition to show us a selected 
line of vice, Barfleur took him genially in hand. " Stop 
a moment, now," he said, with his high hat on the back 
of his head, his fur coat expansively open, and his mono- 
cled eye fixing the intruder with an inquiring gaze, 
"tell me one thing — have you a mother?" 

The small Jew who was the industrious salesman for 
this particular type of ware looked his astonishment. 

They are used to all sorts of set-backs — these par- 
ticular guides — for they encounter all sorts of people. 



THREE GUIDES 243 

severely moral and the reverse ; and I fancy on occasion 
they v^ould be soundly trounced if it were not for the 
police who stand in with them and receive a modicum 
for their protection. They certainly learn to understand 
something of the type of man who will listen to their 
proposition; for I have never seen them more than 
ignored and I have frequently seen them talked to in 
an off-hand way, though I was pleased to note that their 
customers were few. 

This particular little Jew had a quizzical, screwed-up 
expression on his face, and did not care to answer the 
question at first; but resumed his announcement of his 
various delights and the price it would all cost. 

" Wait, wait, wait," insisted Barfleur, " answer my 
question. Have you a mother?" 

" What has that got to do with it ? " asked the guide. 
" Of course I have a mother." 

"Where is she?" demanded Barfleur authoritatively. 

" She 's at home," replied the guide, with an air of 
mingled astonishment, irritation and a desire not to lose 
a customer. 

" Does she know that you are out here on the streets 
of Paris doing what you are doing to-night ? " he con- 
tinued with a very noble air. 

The man swore under his breath. 

" Answer me," persisted Barfleur, still fixing him sol- 
emnly through his monocle. " Does she ? " 

" Why, no, of course she does n't," replied the Jew 
sheepishly. 

" Would you want her to know ? " This in sepulchral 
tones. 

" No, I don't think so." 

"Have you a sister?" 

" Yes." 



244 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" Would you want her to know? " 

" I don't know," replied the guide defiantly. " She 
might know anyhow." 

" Tell me truly, if she did not know, would you want 
her to know? " 

The poor vender looked as if he had got into some 
silly, inexplicable mess from which he would be glad 
to free himself; but he did not seem to have sense 
enough to walk briskly away and leave us. Perhaps he 
did not care to admit defeat so easily. 

" No, I suppose not," replied the interrogated vainly. 

" There you have it," exclaimed Barfleur triumphantly. 
*' You have a mother — you would not want her to 
know. You have a sister — you would not want her 
to know. And yet you solicit me here on the street to 
see things which I do not want to see or know. Think 
of your poor gray-headed mother," he exclaimed gran- 
dilocjuently, and with a mock air of shame and sorrow. 
" Once, no doubt, you prayed at her knee, an innocent 
boy yourself." 

The man looked at him in dull suspicion. 

" No doubt if she saw you here to-night, selling your 
manhood for a small sum of money, pandering to the 
lowest and most vicious elements in life, she would weep 
bitter tears. And your sister — don't you think now 
you had better give up this evil life? Don't you think 
you had better accept any sort of position and earn an 
honest living rather than do what 3^ou are doing?" 

" Well, I don't know," said the man. " This living 
is as good as any other living. I 've worked hard to 
get my knowledge." 

" Good God, do you call this knowledge ? " inquired 
Barfleur solemnly. 

" Yes, I do," replied the man. " I 've worked hard 
to get it." 



I 



THREE GUIDES 245 

" My poor friend," replied Barfleur, " I pity yoii. 
From tlie bottom of my heart I pity you. You are de- 
grading your life and ruining your soul. Come now, 
to-morrow is Sunday. The church bells will be ringing. 
Go to church. Reform your life. Make a new start — 
do. You will never regret it. Your old mother will be 
so glad — and your sister." 

" Oh, say," said the man, walking off, " you don't 
want a guide. You want a church." And he did not 
even look back. 

" It is the only way I have of getting rid of them," 
commented Barfleur. " They always stop when I begin 
to talk to them about their mother. They can't stand 
the thought of their mother." 

" Very true," I said. " Cut it out now, and come 
on. You have preached enough. Let us see the worst 
that Paris has to show." And off we went, arm in arm. 

Thereafter we visited restaurant after restaurant, — 
high, low, smart, dull, — and I can say truly that the 
strange impression which this world made on me lingers 
even now. Obviously, when we arrived at Fysher's at 
twelve o'clock, the fun was just getting under way. 
Some of these places, like this Bar Fysher, were no 
larger than a fair-sized room in an apartment, but 
crowded with a gay and festive throng — Americans, 
South Americans, English and others. One of the 
tricks in Paris to make a restaurant successful is 
to keep it small so that it has an air of over- 
flow and activity. Here at Fysher's Bar, after allow- 
ing room for the red-jacketed orchestra, the piano 
and the waiters, there was scarcely space for the forty 
or fifty guests who were present. Champagne was 
twenty francs the bottle and champagne was all they 
served. It was necessary here, as at all the restaurants, 
to contribute to the support of the musicians; and if 



246 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



a strange young woman should sit at your table for 
a moment and share either the wine or the fruit which 
would be quickly offered, you would have to pay for 
that. Peaches were three francs each, and grapes five 
francs the bunch. It was plain that all these things 
were offered in order that the house might thrive and 
prosper. It was so at each and all of them. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

" THE POISON FLOWER " 

IT was after this night that Barfleur took his departure 
for London for two weeks, where business affairs 
were caHing him during which time I was to make 
myself as idle and gay as I might alone or with the 
individuals to whom he had introduced me or to 
whom I had introductions direct. There was so much 
that I wished to see and that he did not care to see 
over again with me, having seen it all before — the 
Musee de Cluny, for instance, the Louvre, the Luxem- 
bourg and so on. 

The next afternoon after a more or less rambling day 
I saw him off for London and then I plunged into this 
treasure world alone. 

One of the things that seriously impressed me was the 
never-failing singing air of the city which was every- 
where; and another the peculiarly moody atmosphere of 
the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise — that wonderful world 
of celebrated dead — ■ who crowd each other like the 
residents of a narrow city and who make a veritable 
fanfare of names. What a world! One whole day I 
idled here over the tombs of Balzac, Daudet, De Musset, 
Chopin, Rachel, Abelard and Heloise — a long, long 
list of celebrities. My brain fairly reeled with the 
futility of life — and finally I came away immensely 
sad. Another day I visited Versailles and all its 
splendor with one of the most interesting and amusing 
Americans I met abroad, a publisher by the name of 

H , who regaled me with his own naive experiences. 

I fairly choked at times over his quaint, slangy, amusing 

247 



248 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

comments on things as when at Versailles, in the cham- 
bers of Marie Antoinette, he discovered a small secret 
stair only to remark, " There 's where Louis XVI took a 
sneak often enough no doubt," or on one of the towers 
of Notre Dame when to a third person w^io was present 
he commented, " There 's your gargoyles, old sox ! " 
Think of the artistic irreverence of it! Concerning a 
group of buildings which related to the Beaux-Arts I 
believe he inquired, " What 's the bunch of stuff to the 
right? " and so it went. But the beauty of Versailles — 
its stately artificiality! — how it all comes back. 

After two weeks in which I enjoyed myself as much 
as I ever hope to, studying out the charm and color 
of Paris for myself, Barfleur returned fresh, interested, 
ready for the Riviera, ready for more of Paris, ready 
indeed for anything, I said to myself once more, when 
I saw him — and I was very glad to see him indeed. 

The personality of Barfleur supplies a homey quality 
of comfortable companionship. He is so full of a 
youthful zest to live, and so keen after the shows 
and customs of the world. I have never pondered 
why he is so popular with women, or that his friends 
in different walks of life constitute so great a com- 
pany. He seems to have known thousands of all 
sorts, and to be at home under all conditions. That 
persistent, unchanging atmosphere of "All is well with 
me," to maintain which is as much a duty as a 
tradition with him, makes his presence a constant de- 
light. 

We were soon joined by a small party of friends 
thereafter: Sir Scorp, who was bound for an extended 
stay on the Riviera, a sociologist, who was abroad 
on an important scientific investigation, and the repre- 
sentative of an American publishing house, who was 
coming to Paris to waylay Mr. Morgan Shuster, late of 



"THE POISON FLOWER" 249 

Persia, and secure his book. This goodly company de- 
scended upon the Hotel Normandy late one Friday 
afternoon; and it was planned that a party of the whole 
was to be organized the following night to dine at the 
Cafe de Paris and then to make a round of the lesser 
known and more picturesque of Parisian resorts. 

Before this grand pilgrimage to the temples of vice and 
excitement, however, Barfleur and I spent a remarkable 
evening wandering from one restaurant to another in an 
effort to locate a certain Mile. Rillette, a girl who, he had 
informed me when we first came to Paris, had been one 
of the most interesting figures of the Folies stage. 
Four or five years before she had held at the Folies- 
Bergere much the same position now recently attained 
by Mistinguett who was just then enthralling Paris — 
in other words, she was the sensation of that stormy 
world of art and romance of which these restaurants are 
a part. She was more than that. She had a wonderful 
mezzo-soprano voice of great color and richness and a 
spirit for dancing that was Greek in its quality. Barfleur 
was most anxious that I should get at least a glimpse of 
this exceptional Parisian type — the real spirit of this 
fast world, your true artistic poison flower, your lovely 
hooded cobra — before she should be too old, or too 
wretched, to be interesting. 

We started out to visit G.'s Bar, the Bar Fysher, the 
Rat Mort, Palmyr's Bar, the Grelot, the Rabelais, in fact 
the whole list of restaurants and show-places where on 
occasion she might be expected to be seen. On the way 
Barfleur recounted bits of her interesting history, her 
marriages, divorces, vices, drug-habits, a strange cate- 
gory of tendencies that sometimes affect the most vigorous 
and eager of human temperaments. 

At one cafe, on this expedition, quite by accident ap- 
parently, we encountered Miss X., whom I had not seen 



250 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

since we left Fishguard, and who was here in Paris doing 
her best to outvie the women of the gay restaurants in 
the matter of her dresses, her hats, and her beauty. I 
must say she presented a ravishing spectacle — quite as 
wonderful as any of the other women who were to be 
seen here ; but she lacked, as I was to note, the natural vi- 
vacity of the French. We Americans, in spite of our 
high spirits and our healthy enthusiasm for life, are 
nevertheless a blend of the English, the German, and 
some of the sedate nations of the north; and we are 
inclined to a physical and mental passivity which is not 
common to the Latins. This Miss X., vivid creature that 
she was, did not have the spiritual vibration which ac- 
companies the French women. So far as spirit was 
concerned, she seemed superior to most of the foreign 
types present — but the French women are naturally 
gayer, their eyes brighter, their motions lighter. She 
gave us at once an account of her adventures since I 
had seen her — where she had been living, what places 
she had visited, and what a good time she was hav- 
ing. I could not help marveling at the disposition which 
set above everything else in the world the privilege 
of moving in this peculiar realm which fascinated her 
so much. From a conventional point of view, much of 
what she did was, to say the least of it, unusual, 
but she did not trouble about this. As she told me on 
the Mauretania, all she hoped for was to become a 
woman of Machiavellian finesse, and to have some 
money. If she had money and attained to real social 
wisdom, conventional society could go to the devil; 
for the adventuress, according to her, was welcome every- 
where — that is, anywhere she would care to go. She 
did not expect to retain her beauty entirely; but she did 
expect to have some money, and meanwhile to live bril- 
liantly as she deemed that she was now doing. Her 



3 



"THE POISON FLOWER" 251 

love of amusement was quite as marked as ever, and 
her comments on the various women of her class as 
hard and accurate as they were brilliant. I remember 
her saying of one woman, with an easy sweep of her 
hand, "Like a willow, don't you think?" — and of an- 
other, " She glows like a ruby." It was true — fine 
character delineation. 

At Maxim's, an hour later, she decided to go home, 
so we took her to her hotel and then resumed our pur- 
suit of Mile. Rillette. After much wandering we finally 
came upon her, about four in the morning, in one of 
those showy pleasure resorts that I have so frequently 
described. 

" Ah, yes, there she is," Barfleur exclaimed. I looked 
to a distant table to see the figure he indicated — that of 
a young girl seemingly not more than twenty-four or 
twenty-five, a white silk neckerchief tied about her brown 
hair, her body clothed in a rather nondescript costume 
for a world so showy as this. Alost of the women wore 
evening clothes. Rillette had on a skirt of light brown 
wool, a white shirtwaist open in the front and the col- 
lar turned down showing her pretty neck. Her skirt 
was short, and I noticed that she had pleasing ankles 
and pretty feet and her sleeves were short, showing a 
soHd forearm. Before she noticed Barfleur we saw her 
take a slender girl in black for a partner and dance, 
with others, in the open space between the tables which 
circled the walls. I studied her with interest because 
of Barfleur's description, because of the fact that she had 
been married twice, and because the physical and spir- 
itual ruin of a dozen girls was, falsely or not, laid at 
her door. Her face did not suggest the depravity which 
her career would indicate, although it was by no means 
ruddy ; but she seemed to scorn rouge. Her eyes — 
eyes are always significant in a forceful personage — 



252 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

were large and vague and brown, set beneath a wide, 
full forehead — very wonderful eyes. She appeared, in 
her idle security and profound nonchalance, like a fig- 
ure out of the Revolution or the Commune. She would 
have been magnificent in a riot — marching up a Paris- 
ian street, her white band about her brown hair, car- 
rying a knife, a gun, or a flag. She would have had 
the courage, too; for it was so plain that life had lost 
much of its charm and she nearly all of her caring. She 
came over when her dance was done, having seen Barfleur, 
and extended an indifferent hand. He told me, after 
their light conversation in French, that he had chided 
her to the effect that her career was ruining her once 
lovely voice. " I shall find It again at the next corner," 
she said, and walked smartly away. 

" Some one should write a novel about a woman like 
that," he explained urgently. " She ought to be painted. 
It is amazing the sufficiency of soul that goes with that 
type. There are n't many like her. She could be the 
sensation again of Paris if she wanted to — would try. 
But she won't. See what she said of her voice just now." 
He shook his head. I smiled approvingly, for obviously 
the appearance of the woman — her full, rich eyes — bore 
him out. 

She was a figure of distinction in this restaurant 
world; for many knew her and kept track of her. I 
watched her from time to time talking with the guests 
of one table and another, and the chemical content which 
made her exceptional was as obvious as though she were 
a bottle and bore a label. To this day she stands out 
in my mind in her simple dress and indifferent manner 
as perhaps the one forceful, significant figure that I saw 
in all the cafes of Paris or elsewhere. 

I should like to add here, before I part forever 
with this curious and feverish Parisian restaurant world. 




^\ / r 

I looked to a distant table to see the figure he indicated 



"THE POISON FLOWER" 253 

that my conclusion had been, after much and careful 
observation, that it was too utterly feverish, artificial 
and exotic not to be dangerous and grimly destructive 
if not merely touched upon at long intervals. This world 
of champagne drinkers was apparently interested in 
but two things — the flare and glow of the restaurants, 
which were always brightly lighted and packed with 
people — and women. In the last analysis women, 
the young women of easy virtue, were the glittering 
attraction; and truly one might say they were glitter- 
ing. Fine feathers make fine birds, and nowhere more 
so than in Paris. But there were many birds who 
would have been fine in much less showy feathers. In 
many instances they craved and secured a demure sim- 
plicity which was even more destructive than the flaring 
costumes of the demi-monde. It was strange to see 
American innocence — the products of Petoskey, Mich- 
igan, and Hannibal, Missouri, cheek by jowl with the 
most daring and the most vicious women which the 
great metropolis could produce. I did not know until 
some time later how hard some of these women were, 
how schooled in vice, how weary of everything save 
this atmosphere of festivity and the privilege of wear- 
ing beautiful clothes. 

Most people come here for a night or two, or a month 
or two, or once in a year or so; and then return to the 
comparatively dull world from which they emanated — 
which is fortunate. If they were here a little while 
this deceptive world of delight would lose all its glamour; 
but a very few days and you see through the dreary 
mechanism by which it is produced; the brow-beating of 
shabby waiters by greedy managers, the extortionate 
charges and tricks by which money is lured from the 
pockets of the unwary, the wretched ballrooms and gar- 
rets from which some of these butterflies emanate to 



254 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

wing here in seeming delight and then disappear. It 
was a scorching world, and it displayed vice as an upper 
and a nether millstone between which youth and beauty 
is ground or pressed cjuickly to a worthless mass. I 
would defy anybody to liw in this atmosphere so long as 
five years and not exhibit strongly the tell-tale marks of 
decay. When the natural glow o'f youth has gone comes 
the powder and paint box for the face, belladonna for the 
eyes, rouge for the lips, palms, and the nails, and per- 
fumes and ornament and the glister of good clothing; but 
underneath it all one reads the weariness of the eye, the 
sickening distaste for bargaining hour by hour and day 
by day, the cold mechanism of what was once natural, 
instinctive coquetry. You feel constantly that so many 
of these demi-mondaines would sell their souls for one 
last hour of delight and then gladly take poison, as so 
many of them do, to end it all. Consumption, cocaine 
and opium maintain their persistent toll. This is a fur- 
nace of desire — this Montmartre district — and it burns 
furiously with a hard, white-hot flame until there is 
nothing left save black cinders and white ashes. Those 
who can endure its consuming heat are welcome to its 
wonders until emotion and feeling and beauty are no 
more. 



CHAPTER XXV 

MONTE CARLO 

ALL my life before going abroad I had been filled 
with a curiosity as to the character of the 
• Riviera and Monte Carlo. I had never quite 
understood that Nice, Cannes, Mentone, San Remo in 
Italy and Monte Carlo were all in the same vicinity — a 
stone's throw apart, as it were ; and that this world is as 
distinct from the spirit of the north of France as the 
south of England is from the north of England. 

As Barfleur explained it, we went due south from Paris 
to Marseilles and then east along the coast of the Medi- 
terranean until we came to the first stopping-place he 
had selected, Agay, where we would spend a few days 
in peace and quiet, far from the hurry and flare of the 
cafe life we had just left, and then journey on the houi* 
or two more which it takes to reach Monte Carlo. He 
made this arrangement in order that we might have the 
journey through France by day, and proceed from Agay 
of a morning, which would give us, if we had luck — and 
such luck usually prevails on the Riviera — a sunlight 
view of the Mediterranean breaking in rich blue waves 
against a coast that is yellow and brown and gold and 
green by turns. 

Coming south from Paris I had the same sensa- 
tion of wonder that I had traveling from Calais to 
Paris — a wonder as to where the forty odd mil- 
lions of the population of France kept itself. It was 
not visible from the windows of the flying train. All 
the way we traveled through an almost treeless country 
past little white lawns and vineyards; and I never real- 

255 



256 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ized before, although I must have known, that these 
same vineyards were composed of separate vines, set in 
rows Hke corn stalks and standing up for all the world 
like a gnarled T. Every now and then a simple, straight- 
running, silvery stream would appear, making its way 
through a perfectly level lane and set on either bank 
with tall single lines of feathery poplars. The French 
landscape painters have used these over and over; 
and they illustrate exactly the still, lonely character of 
the country. To me, outside of Paris, France has an 
atmosphere of silence and loneliness; although, consider- 
ing the character of the French people I do not under- 
stand how that can be. 

On the way south there was much badinage between 
Barfleur and Sir Scorp, who accompanied us, as to the 
character of this adventure. A certain young friend of 
Barfleur's daughter was then resident at Lyons ; and it 
was Barfleur's humorously expressed hope, that his daugh- 
ter's friend would bring him a basket of cold chicken, 
cake, fruit, and wine. It seems that he had urged Bere- 
nice to write her friend that he was passing through ; and 
I was hourly amused at Scorp's biting reference to Bar- 
fleur's " parental ruse," which he vindictively hoped would 
come to nothing. It was as he hoped ; for at Lyons the 
young lady and her parents appeared, but no basket. 
There were some minutes of animated conversation on 
the platform; and then we were off again at high speed 
through the same flat land, until we reached a lovely 
mountain range in the south of France — a region of 
huts and heavy ox-wains. It reminded me somewhat 
of the mountain regions of northern Kentucky. At 
Marseilles there was a long wait in the dark. A large 
number of passengers left the train here; and then we 
rode on for an hour or two more, arriving by moonlight 
at Agay, or at least the nearest railway station to it. 



1 



MONTE CARLO 257 

The character of the world in which Agay was lo- 
cated was delicious. After the raw and cold of our last 
few days in Paris this satin atmosphere of moon- 
light and perfume w^as wonderful. We stepped out of 
a train at the little beach station of this summer coast 
to find the trees in full leaf and great palms extending 
their wide fronds into the warm air. There was much 
chatter in French while the cabby struggled to get all 
our numerous bags into one vehicle; but when it was 
all accomplished and the top lowered so that we could 
see the night, we set forth along a long white road 
between houses which had anything but a French aspect, 
being a showy development of things Spanish and Moor- 
ish, and past bright whitewashed walls of stone, over 
which wide-leaved palms leaned. It was wonderful to 
see the moonlight on the water, the bluish black waves 
breaking in white ripples on sandy shores, and to feel the 
wind of the South. I could not believe that a ten-hour 
ride from Paris would make so great a change ; but so 
it was. We clattered up finally to the Grand Hotel 
d'Agay; and although it possessed so fine a name it 
was nothing much more than a country inn — compara- 
tively new and solidly built, with a charming vine-cov- 
ered balcony overlooking the sea, and a garden of palms 
in which one might walk. However, the food, Barfleur 
assured us, would be passable. It was only three stories 
high and quite primitive in its appointments. We were 
lighted to our rooms with candles, but the rooms were 
large and cool, and the windows, I discovered by throw- 
ing mine open, commanded a magnificent view of the bay. 
I stood by my window transfixed by the beauty of 
the night. Not in France outside this coast — nor 
in England — can you see anything like this in sum- 
mer. The air was like a caress. Under the white 
moon you could see the main outlines of the coast and 



258 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

the white strip of sand at the bottom. Below us, an- 
chored near the garden, were some boats, and to the 
right white houses shekered in trees and commanding 
the wonders of the water. I went to bed breathing a 
sigh of rehef and feehng as if I should sleep soundly — 
which I did. 

The next morning revealed a world if anything more 
wonderful. Now all the whiteness and the brownness 
and the sharpness of the coast line were picked out by 
a brilliant sun. The bay glittered in the light, a rich 
indigo blue ; and a fisherman putting forth to sea hoisted 
a golden sail. I was astonished to find now that the 
houses instead of being the drab and white of northern 
France were as like to be blue or yellow or green — 
and always there was a touch of color somewhere, blue 
window-sills ornamenting a white house, brown chim- 
neys contrasting with a blue one, the charm of the 
Moorish arch and the Moorish lattice suggesting itself 
at different points — and always palms. I dressed and 
went below and out upon the balcony and through the 
garden to the water's edge, sitting in the warm sun 
and tossing pebbles into the water. Flowers were in 
bloom here — blue and yellow blossoms — and when 
Barfleur came down we took a delightful morning walk 
up a green valley which led inland between hills. No 
northern day in June could have rivaled in perfection 
the wonder of this day; and we talked of the stagey 
make-believe of Parisian night-life as contrasted with 
this, and the wonder of spring generally. 

" I should think the whole world would want to live 
here in winter," I said. 

" The fact is," replied Barfleur, " what are called the 
best people do not come here so much nowadays." 

" Where do they go ? " I asked. 

" Oh, Switzerland is now the thing in winter — the 



MONTE CARLO 259 

Alps and all that relates to them. The new rich have 
overdone this, and it is becoming a little banal." 

" They cannot alter the wonder of the climate," I 
replied. 

We had a table put on the balcony at eleven and ate 
our morning fish and rolls and salad there. I can see 
Sir Scorp cheerfully trifling with the cat we found 
there, the morning sun and scenery having put him in 
a gay mood, calling, "Chat, chat, chat!" and asking, 
" How do you talk to a cat in French ? " There was an 
open carriage which came for us at one into which we 
threw our fur coats and blankets; and then climbed by 
degrees mile after mile up an exquisite slope by the side 
of a valley that gradually became a canon; and at the 
bottom of which tinkled and gurgled a mountain stream. 
This road led to more great trees at the top of a range 
overlooking what I thought at first was a great valley 
where a fog prevailed, but which a few steps further 
was revealed as the wondrous sea — white sails, a distant 
pavilion protruding like a fluted marble toy into the blue 
water, and here and there a pedestrian far below. We 
made our way to a delightful inn some half way down 
and back, where under soaring black pine trees we had 
tea at a little green table — strawberry jam, new bread, 
and cakes. I shall never forget the bitter assault 
I unthinkingly provoked by dipping my spoon into the 
jelly jar. All the vials of social wrath were poured 
upon my troubled head. " It serves him right," in- 
sisted Barfleur, treacherously. " I saw him do that once 
before. These people from the Middle West, what can 
you expect? " 

That night a grand row developed at dinner between 
Scorp and Barfleur as to how long we were to remain in 
Agay and whether we were to stop in or out of Monte 
Carlo. Barfleur's plan was for remaining at least three 



26o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

days here, and then going to a hotel not directly in Monte 
Carlo but half way between Monte Carlo and Mentone — 
the Hotel Bella Riva. I knew that Barfleur had come 
here at the present time largely to entertain me ; and since 
I would rather have had his presence than the atmos- 
phere of the best hotel in Monte Carlo, it really did not 
matter so much to me where we went, so long as it 
was comfortable. Scorp was greatly incensed, or pre- 
tended to be, to think I should be brought here to witness 
the wonders of this festive world, and then be pocketed in 
some side spot where half the delicious life would escape 
me. " Agay ! " he kept commenting, " Agay ! We come 
all the way to the south of France to stop at Agay! 
Candles to light us to bed and French peasants for serv- 
ants. And then we '11 go to Monte Carlo and stop at 
some third-rate hotel ! Well, you can go to the Bella Riva 
if you choose; I am going to the Palace Hotel where I 
can see something, and have a decent bed. I am not 
going to be packed off any ten miles out of Monte Carlo, 
and be compelled to use a street car that stops at twelve 
o'clock and spend thirty francs getting home in a car- 
riage ! " 

This kept up until bedtime with Barfleur offering sol- 
emn explanations of why he had come here, why it would 
be advisable for us to refresh ourselves at the fountain 
of simple scenery after the fogs of London and the 
theatric flare of Paris. He had a fine argument for the 
Bella Riva as a dwelling-site: it was just half way be- 
tween Monte Carlo and Mentone, it commanded all the 
bay on which Monte Carlo stood. Cap Martin, with the 
hotel of that name, here threw its sharp rocky point far 
out into the sea. A car-line passed the door. In a half- 
hour either way we could be in either Mentone or Monte 
Carlo. 

" Who wants to be in Mentone ? " demanded Sir Scorp. 



MONTE CARLO 261 

" I would rather be an hour away from it instead of half 
an hour. If I came to see Monte Carlo I would not 
be bothering about Mentone. I, for one, will not go." 

It was not long before I learned that Scorp did much 
protesting but equally much following. The patient 
silence of Barfleur coupled with direct action at the de- 
cisive moment usually won. Scorp's arguments did 
result in one thing. The next morning, instead of idling 
in the sun and taking a carriage ride over the adjacent 
range, we gathered all our belongings and deposited them 
at the near-by station, while Barfleur and I climbed to the 
top of an adjacent hill where was an old water-pool, to 
have a last look at the lovely, high-colored, florescent bay 
of Agay. Then the long train, with drawing-room cars 
from all parts of Europe rolled in; and we were off 
again. 

Barfleur called my attention as we went along to the 
first of the umbrella trees — of which I was to see so 
many later in Italy — coming into view in the occasional 
sheltered valleys which we were passing, and later those 
marvels of southern France and all Italy, the hill cities, 
towering like great cathedrals high in the air. I shall 
never forget the impression the first sight of one of these 
made on me. In America we have nothing save the 
illusion of clouds over distant landscapes to compare 
with it. I was astonished, transported — the reality was 
so much more wonderful than the drawings of which 
I had seen so many. Outside the car windows the 
sweeping fronds of the palms seemed almost to brush 
the train, hanging over white enclosures of stone. Green 
shutters and green lattices; red roofs and bright blue 
jardinieres; the half-Italianized Frenchman with his 
swarthy face and burning eyes. Presently the train 
stopped at Cannes. I struck out to walk in the pretty 
garden which I saw was connected with the depot. Bar- 



262 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

fleur to send a telegram, Scorp to show how fussy and 
cantankerous he could be. Here were long trains that 
had come from St. Petersburg via Vilna and Vienna; 
and others from Munich, Berlin and Copenhagen with 
diners labeled " Speisewagen " and sleepers " Schlaf- 
wagen." Those from Paris, Calais, Brussels, Cher- 
bourg bore the imposing legend, " Conipagnie Inter- 
nationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Eiiro- 
peens." There was a long black train rumbling in from 
the south with cars marked Tripoli, Roma, Firenze and 
Milano. You had a sense, from merely looking at the 
stations, that the idleness and the luxury of all the world 
was pouring in here at will. 

In ten minutes we were off again — Barfleur expatiat- 
ing solemnly on the fact that in England a homely girl 
was left to her own devices with no one to make anything 
of her, she being plain and that being the end of it; 
while here in France something was done with the 
poorest specimens. 

" Now those two young ladies," he said, waving his 
hand dramatically in the direction of two departing 
travelers, — " they are not much — but look at them. 
See how smartly they are gotten up. Somebody will 
marry them. They have been encouraged to buck up, 

— to believe that there is always hope." And he ad- 
justed his monocle cheerfully. 

Our train was pulling into the station at Monte Carlo. 
I had the usual vague idea of a much-talked-of but never- 
seen place. 

" I can hear the boys calling * Ascenseur,' " exclaimed 
Barfleur to Scorp prophetically, when we were still a little 
way out. He was as keen for the adventure as a child 

— much more so than I was. I could see how he 
set store by the pleasure-providing details of the 
life here; and Scorp, for all his lofty superiority, was 



MONTE. CARLO 263 

equally keen. They indicated to me the great masses 
of baggage which occupied the platforms — all bright 
and new and mostly of good leather. I was interested 
to see the crowds of people — for there was a train de- 
parting in another direction — and to hear the cries of 
"Ascenseur" as predicted — the elevators lifting to the 
terrace in front of the Casino, where the tracks enter 
along a shelf of a declivity considerably above the level 
of the sea. It is a tight httle place — all that I had ex- 
pected in point of showiness — gay rococo houses, white 
and cream, with red roofs climbing up the sides of the 
bare brown hill which rises to La Turbie above. We 
did not stop, but went on to Mentone where we were 
to lunch. It was charming to see striped awnings — 
pink and white and blue and green — gay sunshades of 
various colors and ladies in fresh linens and silks and 
men in white flannels and an atmosphere of outing gen- 
erally. I think a sort of summer madness seizes on 
people under such circumstances and dull care is thrown 
to the winds, and you plan gay adventures and dream 
dreams and take yourself to be a singularly important 
person. And to think that this atmosphere should al- 
ways be here, and that it can always be reached out of 
the snows of Russia and the bitter storms of New York 
and the dreary gray fogs of London, and the biting 
winds of Berlin and Paris! 

We lunched at the Admiralty — one of those res- 
taurants celehres where the haute cuisine of France was 
to be found in its perfection, where balconies of flowers 
commanded the cote d'azure. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE LURE OF GOLD ! 

BEFORE I go a step further in this narrative I 
must really animadvert to the subject of res- 
taurants and the haitfc cuisine of France gen- 
erally, for in this matter Barfleur was as keen as the great- 
est connoisseurs are in the matter of pictures. He loved 
and remembered the quality of dishes and the method 
of their preparation and the character of the men who 
prepared them and the atmosphere in which they were 
prepared and in fact everything which relates to the 
culinary and gastronomic arts and the history of the 
gourmet generally. 

In Paris and London Barfleur was constantly talking of 
the restaurants of importance and contrasting the bor- 
rowed French atmosphere of the best English restau- 
rants with the glories of the parent kitchens in France. 
He literally schooled me in the distinction which was 
to be drawn between the Cafe Anglais, Voisin's and 
Paillard's, and those smart after-supper restaurants of 
the Montmartre district where the cuisine of France had 
been degraded by the addition of negroes, tinsel, dancers, 
and music. Nevertheless he was willing to admit that 
their cuisine was not bad. As I remember it now, I was 
advised to breakfast at Henry's, to dine at the Ritz, and 
to sup at Durand's ; but if I chose to substitute the Cafe 
de Paris for the Ritz at dinner I was not going far 
wrong. He knew that M. Braquesec, the younger, was 
now in charge of Voisin's and that Paul was the mattre 
d'hotel and that during the Commune Voisin's had once 
served consomme d' elephant, le chameau roti a I'A^iglais, 

264 






THE LURE OF GOLD! 265 

and le chat planqiie de rats. He thought it must have 
been quite excellent because M. Braquesec, the elder, su- 
pervised it all and because the wines served with it were 
from twenty to forty years of age. 

When it came to the Riviera he was well aware of 
all that region had to promise from Cannes to Men- 
tone; and he could nicely differentiate the advantages 
of the Cafe de Paris; the grand dining-room of the 
Hotel de Paris which was across the street; the Her- 
mitage, which he insisted had quite the most beautiful 
dining-room in Monte Carlo ; the Princess which one 
of the great stars of the opera had very regularly pat- 
ronized some years before ; the restaurant of the Grand 
Hotel which he considered very exceptional indeed; and 
the restaurant at the tenninus of the La Turbie mountain 
railway — which he emphatically approved and which 
commanded a magnificent view of the coast and the 
sea. I was drilled to understand that if I had mostelle 
a I' Anglais at the Hotel de Paris I was having a very 
excellent fish of the country, served in the very best 
manner, which is truly worth knowing. H we went to 
the Princess, the maUre d' hotel, whom he knew from an 
older day, would serve us midgeon in some marvelous 
manner which would be something for me to remember. 
At the Cafe de Paris we were to have soupe Monegasque 
which had a reminiscence, so he insisted, of Bouilla- 
baisse and was very excellent. The soupions were oc- 
topi, but delicate little ones — not the kind that would 
be thrust upon one in Rome. I was lost among dis- 
courses regarding the value of the Regents at Nice; the 
art of M. Fleury, now the manager of the Hotel de 
Paris; and what a certain head-master could do for one 
in the way of providing a little local color, as Barfleur 
termed it, in the food. To all of this, not being a gour- 
met, I paid as strict attention as I could; though I fear 



266 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

me much, that a large proportion of the exquisite signifi- 
cance of it all was lost on me. I can only say, however, 
that in spite of Scorp's jeering, which was constant, the 
only time we had a really wonderful repast was when 
Barfleur ordered it. 

The first luncheon at the Admiralty was an excellent 
case in point. Barfleur being on the Riviera and being 
host to several, was in the most stupendous of artistic 
moods. He made up a menu of the most delicious of hors 
d'ceuvre — which he insisted should never have been al- 
lowed to take the place of soup, but which, alas, the cus- 
tom of the time sanctioned and the caviare of which in 
this case was gray, a point which he wished me par- 
ticularly to note — sole walewski ; roast lamb ; salad 
nicois; and Genoese asparagus in order to give our meal 
the flavor of the land. We had coffee on the balcony 
afterwards, and I heard much concerning the wonders of 
this region and of the time when the Winter Palace was 
the place to lunch. A grand duke was a part of the 
day's ensemble, and two famous English authors before 
whom we paraded with dignity. 

After lunch we made our way to the Hotel Bella 
Riva, which Barfleur in spite of Scorp's complaints had 
finally selected. It stood on a splendid rise between 
Mentone and Monte Carlo; and here, after some slight 
bargaining we were assigned to three rooms en suite 
with bath. I was given the corner room with two bal- 
conies and a flood of sunshine and such a view as I 
have never seen from any window before or since. 
Straight before me lay the length of Cap Martin, a 
grove of thousands of olive trees reflecting from its 
burnished leaves the rays of the sun and crowding it com- 
pletely, and beyond it the delicious sweep of the Mediter- 
ranean. To the right lay the bay of Monte Carlo, the 
heights of La Turbie, and all the ghttering world which 



THE LURE OF GOLD! 267 

is Monte Carlo proper. To the left lay Mentone and 
the green and snow-capped mountains of Ventimiglia 
and San Remo faintly visible in the distance. Never 
an hour but the waters of the sea were a lighter or 
a darker shade of blue and never an hour but a 
lonely sail was crossing in the foreground. High 
above the inn at La Turbie, faintly visible in the 
distance, rose a ruined column of Augustus — a broken 
memory of the time when imperial Rome was dom- 
inant here, and when the Roman legions passed this way 
to Spain. At different hours I could hear the bugle of 
some frontier garrison sounding reveille, guard-mount, 
and the sun-set call. Oh, those wonderful mornings 
when I was waked by the clear note of a horn flying up 
the valleys of the mountains and sounding over the sea! 

Immediately after our arrival it was settled that once 
we had made a swift toilet we would start for Monte 
Carlo. We were ready to bring back tremendous win- 
nings — and eager to see this showy world, the like of 
which, Scorp insisted, was not to be found elsewhere. 

" Oh, yes," he said, " I have been to Biarritz and to 
Ostend and Aix-les-Bains — but they are not like this. 
We really should live at the Palace where we could walk 
on the terrace in the morning and watch the pigeon- 
shooting." He told a significant story of how once 
having a toothache he came out of the card-rooms of 
the Casino into the grand lobby and attempted to pour 
a little laudanum out of a thin vial, with which to ease 
the pain. " I stepped behind a column," he explained, 
" so that I might not be seen; but just as I uncorked the 
vial four guards seized me and hurried me out of the 
place. They thought I was taking poison. I had to 
make plain my identity to the management before they 
would let me back." 

We arrived at the edge of the corporation which is 



268 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Monte Carlo and walked in, surveying the character of 
the place. It was as gaudy and rococoesque as one might 
well expect this world to be. It reminded me in part 
of that Parisian world which one finds about the Arc 
de Triomphe, rich and comfortable, only there are no car- 
riages in Monte Carlo to speak of. The distances are 
too slight and the grades too steep. When we reached 
the square of the Casino, it did not strike me as having 
any especial charm. It was small and sloping, and laid 
off in square beds of reddish flowers with greensward 
about and gravel paths going down either side. At the 
foot lay the Casino, ornate and cream-white, with a glass 
and iron canopy over the door and a swarm of people 
moving to and fro — not an idling throng but rather 
having an air of considerable industry about it, quite as 
one might expect to find in a business world. People 
were bustling along as we were to get to the Casino or 
to go away from it on some errand and get back. We 
hurried down the short length of the sward, checking 
our coats, after waiting a lengthy time for our turn in 
line, and then entering the chambers where credentials 
are examined and cards of admission sold. There was 
quite some formality about this, letters being examined, 
our personal signature and home address taken and then 
we were ready to enter. 

While Barfleur presented our credentials. Sir Scorp 
and I strolled about in the lobby observing the inpouring 
and outpouring throng. He showed me the exact pillar 
where he had attempted to ease his tooth. This was an 
interesting world of. forceful people. The German, the 
Italian, the American, the Englishman and the Russian 
were easily recognizable. Sir Scorp was convinced that 
the faces of the winners and the losers could be distin- 
guished, but I am afraid I was not enough of a physiog- 
nomist to do this. If there were any who had just lost 



THE LURE OF GOLD! 269 

their last dollar I did not detect them. On the con- 
trary it seemed to me that the majority were ab- 
normally cheerful and were having the best time in 
the world. A large bar at the end of the room 
opposite the general entrance to the card-rooms had 
a peculiarly American appearance. The one thing that 
was evident was that all here were healthy and vigorous, 
with a love of life in their veins, eager to be entertained, 
and having the means in a large majority of cases to 
accomplish this end. It struck me here as it has in so 
many other places where great pleasure-loving throngs 
congregate, that the difference between the person who 
has something and the person who has nothing is one 
of intense desire, and what, for a better phrase, I will 
call a capacity to live. 

The inner chambers of the Casino were divided into 
two groups, the outer being somewhat less ornately 
decorated and housing those who for reasons of economy 
prefer to be less exclusive, and the inner more elaborate in 
decoration and having of an evening, it was said, a more 
gorgeously dressed throng. Just why one should choose 
less expensive rooms when gambling, unless low in funds, 
I could not guess. Those in both sets of rooms seemed 
to have enough money to gamble. I could not see, after 
some experience, that there was very much difference. 
The players seemed to wander rather indiscriminately 
through both sets of rooms. Certainly we did. An 
extra charge of five louis was made for the season's 
privilege of entering the inner group or " Cirque prive " 
as it was called. 

I shall never forget my first sight of the famous 
gaming-tables in the outer rooms — for we were not 
venturing into the inner at present. Aside from the 
glamour of the crowd — which was as impressive as an 
opera first night — and the decorative quality of the room 



270 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

which was unduly rich and brilliant, I was most vividly 
impressed by the vast quantities of money scattered so 
freely over the tables, small piles of gold louis, stacks of 
eight, ten, fifteen and even twenty-five franc pieces, layers 
of pale crisp bank-notes whose value was anywhere from 
one hundred to one thousand francs. It was like looking 
through the cashier's window of an immense bank. The 
mechanism and manipulation of the roulette wheel I did 
not understand at first nor the exact duties of the many 
croupiers seated at each table. Their cry of " Rien ne 
va plus!" and the subsequent scraping together of the 
shining coin with the little rakes or the throwing back of 
silver, gold and notes to the lucky winner gripped my 
attention like a vise. " Great God ! " I thought, " sup- 
posing I was to win a thousand pounds with my fifteen. 
I should stay in Europe an entire year." 

Like all beginners I watched the process with large 
eyes and then seeing Barfleur get back five gold louis for 
one placed on a certain number I ventured one of my 
own. Result: three louis. I tried again on another 
number and won two more. I saw myself (in fancy) 
the happy possessor of a thousand pounds. My next 
adventure cost me two louis, whereupon I began to wonder 
whether I was such a fortunate player after all. 

" Come with me," Barfleur said, coming around to 
where I stood adventuring my small sums with indescrib- 
able excitement and taking my arm genially. " I want to 
send some money to my mother for luck. I 've just 
won fifteen pounds." 

" Talk about superstition," I replied, coming away 
from the table, " I did n't believe it of you." 

" I 'm discovered ! " he smiled philosophically ; " besides 
I want to send some sweets to the children." 

We strolled out into the bright afternoon sun finding 
the terrace comparatively empty, for the Casino draws 



THE LURE OF GOLD! 271 

most of the crowd during the middle and late after- 
noon. It was strange to leave these shaded, artificially 
lighted rooms with their swarms of well-dressed men 
and women sitting about or bending over tables all 
riveted on the one thrilling thing — the drop of the 
little white ball in a certain pocket — and come out into 
the glittering white world with its blazing sun, its visible 
blue sea, its cream-colored buildings and its waving 
palms. We went to several shops — one for sweets and 
one for flowers, haut parisiennes in their atmosphere — 
and duly dispatched our purchases. Then we went to 
the post-office, plastered with instructions in various 
languages, and saw that the money was sent to Bar- 
fleur's mother. Then we returned to the Casino and 
Barfleur went his way, while I wandered from board 
to board studying the crowd, risking an occasional louis, 
and finally managing to lose three pounds more than I 
had won. In despair I went to see what Scorp was 
doing. He had three or four stacks of gold coin in front 
of him at a certain table, all of five hundred dollars. 
He was risking these in small stacks ^f ten and fifteen 
louis and made no sign when he won or lost. On sev- 
eral occasions I thought he was certain to win a great 
sum, so lavishly were gold louis thrown him by the 
croupier, but on others I felt equally sure he was to be 
disposed of, so freely were his gold pieces scraped away 
from him. 

"How are you making out?" I asked. 

" I think I 've lost eight hundred francs. If I should 
win this though, I '11 risk a bee-a." 

"What's a bee-a?" 

"A thousand franc note." 

My poor little three louis seemed suddenly insignifi- 
cant. A lady sitting next to him, a woman of perhaps 
fifty, with a cool, calculating face had perhaps as much 



272 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

as two thousand dollars in gold and notes piled up before 
her. All around the table were these piles of gold, 
silver and notes. It was a fascinating scene. 

" There, that ends me," observed Scorp, all at once, his 
stock of gold on certain numbers disappearing with the 
rake of the croupier. " Now I 'm done. We might 
walk out in the lobby and watch the crowd." All his 
good gold so quietly raked in by the croupier was lin- 
gering painfully in my memory. I was beginning to 
see plainly that I would not make a good gambler. Such 
a loss distressed me. 

" How much did you lose ? " I inquired. 

" Oh, a thousand francs," he replied. 

We strolled up and down, Scorp commenting sarcastic- 
ally on one type and another and yet with a genial toler- 
ance which was amusing. 

I remember a chamiing-looking cocotte, a radiant type 
of brunette, with finely chiseled features, slim, delicate 
fingers, a dainty little foot, who, clad in a fetching cos- 
tume of black and white silk which fitted her with all 
the airy grace of a bon-bon ribbon about its box, stood 
looking uncertainly about as if she expected to meet some 
one. 

" Look at her," Scorp commented with that biting little 
ha! ha! of his, which involved the greatest depths of 
critical sarcasm imaginable. " There she is. She 's lost 
her last louis and she 's looking for some one to pay for 
her dinner! " 

I had to smile to myself at the man's croaking indif- 
ference to the lady's beauty. Her obvious channs had 
not the slightest interest for him. 

Of another lovely creature who went by with her 
head held high and her lips parted in a fetching, coaxing 
way he observed, " She practises that in front of her 
mirror!" and finding nothing else to attack, finally 



THE LURE OF GOLD! 273 

turned to me. " I say, it 's a wonder you don't take a 
cocktail. There 's your American bar." 

" It 's the wrong time, Scorp," I replied. " You don't 
understand the art of cocktail drinking." 

" I should hope not ! " he returned morosely. 

Finally after much more criticism of the same sort 
Barfleur arrived, having lost ten louis, and we adjourned 
for tea. As usual an interesting argument arose now 
not only as to where we were to dine, but how we were 
to live our very lives in Monte Carlo. 

" Now I should think," said Barfleur, " it would be 
nice if we were to dine at the Princess. You can get 
sole and canard a la presse there and their wines are 
excellent. Besides we can't drive to the Bella Riva 
every evening." 

" Just as I thought ! " commented Scorp bitterly. 
" Just as I thought. Now that we are staying at Bella 
Riva, a half hour or so away, we will dine in Monte 
Carlo. I knew it. We will do no such thing. We will 
go back to the Bella Riva, change our clothes, dine simply 
and inexpensively [this from the man who had just lost 
a thousand francs] come back here, buy our tickets for 
the Cirque prive and gamble inside. First we go to Agay 
and spend a doleful time among a lot of peasants and 
now we hang around the outer rooms of the Casino. 
We can't live at the Hotel de Paris or enter the Cirque 
prive but we can dine at the Princess. Ha! ha! Well, 
we will do no such thing. Besides, a little fasting will 
not do you any harm. You need not waste all your 
money on your stomach." 

The man had a gay acidity which delighted me. 

Barfleur merely contemplated the ceiling of the lobby 
where we were gathered while Sir Scorp rattled on in 
this fashion. 

" I expected to get tickets for the Cirque prive — " he 



274 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

soothed and added suggestively, " It will cost at least 
twenty francs to drive over to the Bella Riva." 

"Exactly!" replied Scorp. "As I predicted. We 
can't live in Monte Carlo but we can pay twenty francs to 
get over to Cap Martin. Thank Heaven there are still 
street cars. I do not need to spend all my money on 
shabby carriages, riding out in the cold!" (It was a 
heavenly night.) 

" I think we 'd better dine at the Princess and go home 
early," pleaded Barfleur. " We 're all tired. To-mor- 
row I suggest that we go up to La Turbie for lunch. 
That will prove a nice diversion and after that we '11 
come down and get our tickets for the Cirque prive. 
Come now. Do be reasonable. Dreiser ought to see 
something of the restaurant life of Monte Carlo." 

As usual Barfleur won. We did go to the Cafe Prin- 
cess. We did have sole Normande. We did have 
canard a la presse. We did have some excellent wine 
and Barfleur was in his glory. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

WE GO TO EZE 

THE charms of Monte Carlo are many. Our first 
morning there, to the sound of a horn blowing 
reveille in the distance, I was up betimes enjoy- 
ing the wonderful spectacles from my balcony. The sun 
was just peeping up over the surface of an indigo sea, 
shooting sharp golden glances in every direction. Up 
on the mountains, which rise sharp and clear like great 
unornamented cathedrals back of the jeweled villages 
of this coast, it was picking out shepherd's hut and fallen 
mementoes of the glory that was Rome. A sailboat or 
two was already making its way out to sea, and below 
me on that long point of land which is Cap Martin, 
stretching like a thin green spear into the sea, was the 
splendid olive orchard which I noted the day before, 
its gleaming leaves showing a different shade of green 
from what it had then. I did not know it until the 
subject came up that olive trees live to be a thousand 
years old and that they do as well here on this little 
strip of coast, protected by the high mountains at their 
back, as they do anywhere in Italy. In fact, as I think 
of it, this lovely projection of land, no wider than to 
permit of a few small villages and cities crowding be- 
tween the sea and the mountains, is a true projection 
of Italy itself, its palms, olive trees, cypresses, umbrella 
trees and its peasants and architecture. I understand 
that a bastard French — half French, half Italian — is 
spoken here and that only here are the hill cities truly 
the same as they are in Italy. 

While I was gazing at the morning sun and the blue 

275 



2j(y A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

sea and marveling how quickly the comfortable Riviera 
Express had whirled us out of the cold winds of Paris 
into this sun-kissed land, Barfleur must have been up and 
shaving, for presently he appeared, pink and clean in 
his brown dressing-gown, to sit out on my lovely bal- 
cony with me. 

" You know," he said, after he had commented on 
the wonder of the morning and the delicious soothing 
quality of the cool air, " Scorp is certainly an old fuss- 
button. There he lies in there now, ready to pounce 
on us. Of course he is n't very strong physically and 
that makes him irritable. He does so love to be con- 
trary." 

" I think he is a good running-mate for you," I ob- 
served. " If he leans to asceticism in the matter of 
food, you certainly run to the other extreme. Sybaritic 
is a mild expression for your character." 

"You don't mean it?" 

" I certainly do." 

"In what way have I shown myself sybaritic?" 

I charged him with various crimes. My amicable lec- 
ture was interrupted by the arrival of rolls and coffee 
and we decided to take breakfast in the company of 
Scorp. We knocked at his door. 

" Entrezl" 

There he was, propped up in bed, his ascetic face 
crowned by his brownish black hair and set with those 
burning dark eyes — a figure of almost classic signifi- 
cance. 

" Ah ! " he exclaimed grimly, " here he comes. The 
gourmet's guide to Europe ! " 

" Now, do be cheerful this morning, Scorp, do be," 
cooed Barfleur. " Remember it is a lovely morning. 
You are on the Riviera. We are going to have a charm- 
ing time." 



WE GO TO EZE 277 

" You are, anyway ! " commented Scorp. 

" I am the most sacrificial of men, I assure you," com- 
mented Barfleur. " I would do anything to make you 
happy. We will go up to La Turbie to-day, if you say, 
and order a charming lunch. After that we will go 
to Eze, if you say, and on to Nice for dinner, if you 
think fit. We will go into the Casino there for a little 
while and then return. Is n't that a simple and satis- 
factory program? Dreiser and I will walk up to La 
Turbie. You can join us at one for lunch. You think 
he ought to see Eze, don't you?" 

" Yes, if there is n't some Cafe de Paris hidden away 
up there somewhere where you can gormandize again. 
If we can just manage to get you past the restaurants! " 

So it was agreed : Barfleur and I would walk ; Sir 
Scorp was to follow by train. As the day was balmy 
and perfect, all those special articles of adornment pur- 
chased in London for this trip were extracted from oui* 
luggage and duly put on — light weight suits, straw 
hats and ties of delicate tints; and then we set forth. 
The road lay in easy swinging S's, up and up past ter- 
raced vineyards and garden patches and old stone cot- 
tages and ambling muleteers with their patient little 
donkeys heavily burdened. Automobiles, I noticed, even 
at this height came grumbling up or tearing down — and 
always the cypress tree with its whispering black-green 
needles and the graceful umbrella tree made artistic 
architectural frames for the vistas of the sea. 

Here and now I should like to pay my tribute to the 
cypress tree. I saw it later in all its perfection at Pisa, 
Rome, Florence, Spello, Assisi and elsewhere in Italy, 
but here at Monte Carlo, or rather outside of it, I saw 
it first. I never saw it connected with anything tawdry 
or commonplace and wherever it grows there is dignity 
and beauty. It is not to be seen anywhere in imme- 



278 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



■I 



diate contact with this feverish Casino world of Monte 
Carlo. It is as proud as beauty itself, as haughty as 
achievement. By old ruins, in sacred burial grounds, 
by worn gates and forgotten palaces it sways and sighs. 
It is as mournful as death — as somber in its mien as 
great age and experience — a tree of the elders. Where 
Rome grew it grew, and to Greek and Roman temples 
in their prime and pride it added its sacred company. 

Plant a cypress tree near my grave when I am dead. 
To think of its tall spearlike body towering like a stately 
monument over me would be all that I could artistically 
ask. If some of this illusory substance which seems 
to be that which is I, physically, here on this earth, 
should mingle with its fretted roots and be builded into 
the noble shaft of its body I should be glad. It would 
be a graceful and artistic way to disappear into the 
unknown. 

Our climb to La Turbie was in every respect delight- 
ful. We stopped often to comment on the cathedral- 
like character of the peaks, to speculate as to the age 
of the stone huts. 

About half way up we came to a little inn called the 
Corniche, which really hangs on the cornice of this great 
range, commanding the wide, blue sweep of the Medi- 
terranean below; and here, under the shade of umbrella 
trees and cypresses and with the mimosa in full bloom 
and with some blossom which Barfleur called " cherry- 
pie " blowing everywhere, we took seats at a little green 
table to have a pot of tea. It is an American inn — 
this Corniche — with an American flag fluttering high 
on a white pole, and an American atmosphere not un- 
like that of a country farmhouse in Indiana. There 
were some chickens scratching about the door; and at 
least three canaries in separate bright brass cages hung 
in the branches of the surrounding trees. They sang 



WE GO TO EZE 279 

with tremendous energy. With the passing of a mule- 
teer, whose spotted cotton shirt and earth-colored trou- 
sers and dusty skin bespoke the lean, narrow life of the 
peasant, we discussed wealth and poverty, lavish expen- 
diture and meager subsistence, the locust-like quality of 
the women of fashion and of pleasure, who eat and eat* 
and gorge and glut themselves of the showy things of 
life without aim or even thought; the peasant on this 
mountainside, with perhaps no more than ten cents a day 
to set his beggar board, while below the idle company in 
the Casino, shining like a white temple from where we 
sat, were wasting thousands upon thousands of dollars 
hourly. Barfleur agreed most solemnly with it all. He 
was quite sympathetic. The tables there, he said, even 
while we looked, were glutted with gold, and the Prince 
of Monaco was building, with his surplus earnings, use- 
less marine museums which no one visited. 

I was constantly forgetting in our peregrinations 
about the neighborhood how small the Principality of 
Monaco is. I am sure it would fit nicely into ten city 
blocks. A large portion of Monte Carlo encroaches on 
French territory — only the Casino, the terrace, the 
heights of Monaco belong to the Principality. One-half 
of a well-known restaurant there, I believe, is in Monaco 
and the other half in France. La Turbie, on the heights 
here, the long road we had come, almost everything in 
fact, was in France. We went into the French post- 
office to mail cards and then on to the French restaurant 
commanding the heights. This particular restaurant 
commands a magnificent view. A circle about which 
the automobiles turned in front of its door was supported 
by a stone wall resting on the sharp slope of the moun- 
tain below. All the windows of its principal dining- 
room looked out over the sea, and of the wonderful view 
I was never weary. The room had an oriental touch, 



28o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and the white tables and black-coated waiters accorded 
ill with this. Still it offered that smartness of service 
which only the French restaurants possess. 

Barfleur was for waiting for Scorp who had not ar- 
rived. I was for eating, as I was hungry. Finally we 
sat down to luncheon and we were consuming the sweet 
when in he came. His brownish-black eyes burned with 
their usual critical fire. If Sir Scorp had been born with a 
religious, reforming spirit instead of a penchant for art 
he would have been a St. Francis of Assisi. As it was, 
without anything to base it on, except Barfleur's gor- 
mandizing propensities, he had already established moral 
censorship over our actions, 

" Ah, here you are, eating as usual," he observed with 
that touch of lofty sarcasm which at once amused and 
irritated me. " No excursion without a meal as its 
object." 

" Sit down. El Greco," I commented, " and note the 

beautiful view. This should delight your esthetic soul." 

" It might delight mine, but I am not so sure about 

yours. Barfleur would certainly see nothing in it if there 

were not a restaurant here — ha ! " 

" I found a waiter here who used to serve me in the 
Cafe Royal in London," observed Barfleur cheerfully. 

" Now we can die content," sighed Scorp. " We have 
been recognized by a French waiter on the Riviera. 
Ha! Never happy," he added, turning to me, "unless 
he is being recognized by waiters somewhere — his one 
claim to glory." 

We went out to see the ruined monument to Augustus 
Csesar, crumbling on this high mountain and command- 
ing the great blue sweep of the Mediterranean below. 
There were a number of things in connection with this 
monument which were exceedingly interesting. It illus- 
trated so well the Roman method of construction : a vast 



WE GO TO EZE 281 

core of rubble and brick, faced with marble. Barfleur in- 
formed me that only recently the French government 
had issued an order preventing the removal of any more 
of the marble, much of which had already been stolen, 
carted away or cut up here into other forms. Immense 
marble drums of pure white stone were still lying about, 
fallen from their places; and in the surrounding huts 
of the peasant residents of La Turbie could be seen 
parts of once noble pillars set into the fabric of their 
shabby doorways or used as corner-stones to support 
their pathetic little shelters. I recall seeing several 
of these immense drums of stone set at queer angles 
under the paper walls of the huts, the native peas- 
ants having built on them as a base, quite as a spider might 
attach its gossamer net to a substantial bush or stone. I 
reflected at length on the fate of greatness and how little 
the treasures of one age may be entrusted to another. 
Time and chance, dullness and wasteful ignorance, lie 
in wait for them all. 

The village of La Turbie, although in France, gave 
me my first real taste of the Italian village. High up 
on this mountain above Monte Carlo, in touch really 
with the quintessence of showy expenditure — clothes, 
jewels, architecture, food — here it stood, quite as it 
must have been standing for the last three or four hun- 
dred years — its narrow streets clambering up and down 
between houses of gray stone or brick, covered with gray 
lichens. I thought of Benvenuto Cellini — how he al- 
ways turned the corners of the dark, narrow streets of 
Rome in as wide a circle as possible in order to save himself 
from any lurking assassin — that he might draw his own 
knife quickly. Dirt and age and quaintness and romance : 
it was in these terms that La Turbie spoke to us. Al- 
though anxious to proceed to Eze, not so very far away, 
which they both assured me was so much more pictur- 



282 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

esqiie and characteristic, yet we lingered, looking lovingly 
up and down narrow passages where stairs clambered 
gracefully, where arches curved picturesquely over streets, 
and where plants bloomed bravely in spotted, crumbling 
windows. Age! age! And with it men, women and 
children of the usual poverty-stricken Italian type — not 
French, but Italians. Women with bunchy blue or purple 
skirts, white or colored kerchiefs, black hair, wrinkled, 
yellow or blackish-brown faces, glittering dark eyes and 
claw-like hands. 

Not far from the center of this moldy scene, flourish- 
ing like a great lichen at the foot of Augustus, his mag- 
nificent column, was a public fountain, of what date I 
do not know. The housewives of the community were 
hard at their washing, piling the wet clothes in soapy 
masses on the stone rim of the basin. They were pat- 
tering and chattering, their skirts looped up at their 
hips, their heads wound about with cloths of various 
colors. It brought back to my mind, by way of contrast, 
the gloomy wash- and bath-house in Bethnal Green, which 
I have previously commented on. Despite poverty and 
ignorance, the scene here was so much more inviting — 
even inspiring. Under a blue sky, in the rays of a bright 
afternoon sun, beside a moldering but none the less lovely 
fountain, they seemed a very different kind of mortal 
— far more fortunate than those I had seen in Bethnal 
Green and Stepney. What can governments do toward 
supplying blue skies, broken fountains and humanly stir- 
ring and delightful atmosphere? Would Socialism pro- 
vide these things ? 

With many backward glances, we departed, conveyed 
hence in an inadequate little vehicle drawn by one of 
the boniest horses it has ever been my lot to ride behind. 
The cheerful driver was as fat as his horse was lean, 
and as dusty as the road itself. We were wedged tightly 



WE GO TO EZE 283 

in the single green cloth seat, Scorp on one side, I on 
the other, Barfleur in the middle, expatiating as usual on 
the charm of life and enduring cheerfully all the cares 
and difficulties of his exalted and self-constituted office 
of guide, mentor and friend. 

Deep green valleys, dizzy precipices along which the 
narrow road skirted nervously, tall tops of hills that rose 
about you craggily or pastorally — so runs the road to 
Eze and we followed it jestingly. Sir Scorp so dizzy con- 
templating the depths that we had to hold him in. Bar- 
fleur was gay and ebullient. I never knew a man who 
could become so easily intoxicated with life. 

" There you have it," said Sir Scorp, pointing far down 
a green slope to where a shepherd was watching his 
sheep, a cape coat over his arm, a crooked staff in his 
hand ; " there is your pastoral, lineally descended from 
the ancient Greeks. Barfleur pretends to love nature, but 
that would not bring him out here. There is no canard 
a la presse attached to it — no sole walewski." 

" And see the goose-girl ! " I exclaimed, as a maiden 
in bare feet, her skirt falling half way below her knees, 
crossed the road. 

" All provided, my dear boy," assured Barfleur, beaming 
on me through his monocle. '* Everything as it should 
be for you. You see how I do. Goose-girls, shepherds, 
public fountains, old monuments to Caesar, anything 
you like. I will show you Eze now. Nothing finer in 
Europe." 

We were nearing Eze around the green edge of a 
mountain — its top — and there I saw it, my first hill- 
city. Not unlike La Turbie, it was old and gray, but 
with that spectacular dignity which anything set on a 
hill possesses. Barfleur carefully explained to me that in 
the olden days — some few hundred years before — the 
inhabitants of the seashore and plain were compelled 



284 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

to take to the hills to protect themselves against maraud- 
ing pirates — that the hill-city dates from the earliest 
times in Italy and was common to the Latins before the 
dawn of history. Eze towered up, completely sur- 
rounded by a wall, the only road leading to it being the 
one on which we were traveling. By a bridge we crossed 
a narrow gully, dividing one mountain height from an- 
other, and then, discharging our fat cabman and his bony 
horse, mounted to the open gate or arched door, now 
quite unguarded. Some of the village children were 
selling the common flowers of the field, and a native in 
tight dusty trousers and soft hat was entering, 

I think I devoured the strangeness and glamour of 
Eze as one very hungry would eat a meal. I examined 
all the peculiarities of this outer entrance and noted how 
like a hole in a snail shell it was, giving not directly into 
the old city, or village, but into a path that skirted the 
outer wall. Above were holes through which defenders 
could shower arrows and boiling oil upon those who 
might have penetrated this outer defense. There was a 
blind passage at one point, luring the invaders into a 
devilish pocket where their fate was sealed. If one 
gained this first gate and the second, which gave into a 
narrow, winding, upward-climbing street, the fighting 
would be hand to hand and always upward against men 
on a higher level. The citadel, as we found at last, was 
now a red and gray brick ruin, only some arches and 
angles of which were left, crowning the summit, from 
which the streets descended like the whorls of a snail- 
shell. Gray cobble-stone, and long narrow bricks set 
on their sides, form the streets or passages. The squat 
houses of brick and gray stone followed closely the con- 
volutions of the street. It was a silent, sleepy little 
city. Few people were about. The small shops were 
guarded by old women or children. The men were 



WE GO TO EZE 285 

sheep-herders, muleteers, gardeners and farmers on the 
slopes below. Anything that is sold in this high-placed 
city is brought up to it on the backs of slow-climbing, 
recalcitrant donkeys. One blessed thing, the sewage 
problem of these older Italian-French cities, because of 
their situation on the hillside, solves itself — otherwise, 
God help the cities. Barfleur insisted that there was 
leprosy hereabouts — a depressing thought. 

Climbing up and around these various streets, peering 
in at the meager little windows where tobacco, fruit, 
cheese and modest staples were sold, we reached finally 
the summit of Eze, where for the first time in Italy — 
I count the Riviera Italian — the guide nuisance began. 
An old woman, in patois French, insisted on chanting 
about the ruins. Sir Scorp kept repeating, " No, no, 
my good woman, go away," and I said in English, " Run, 
tell it to Barfleur. He is the bell-wether of this flock." 

Barfleur clambered to safety up a cracked wall of the 
ruin and from his dizzy height eyed her calmly and bade 
her " Run along, now." But it was like King Canute 
bidding the sea to retreat, till she had successfully taken 
toll of us. Meanwhile we stared in delight at the Medi- 
terranean, at the olive groves, the distant shepherds, at 
the lovely blue vistas and the pale threads of roads. 

We were so anxious to get to Nice in time for dinner, 
and so opposed to making our way by the long dusty 
road which lay down the mountain, that we decided to 
make a short cut of it and go down the rocky side of 
the hill by a foot-wide path which was pointed out to 
us by the village priest, a haggard specimen of a man 
who, in thin cassock and beggarly shoes and hat, paraded 
before his crumbling little church door. We were a 
noble company, if somewhat out of the picture, as we 
piled down this narrow mountaineer's track — Barfleur 
in a brilliant checked suit and white hat, and Sir Scorp 



286 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



in very smart black. My best yellow shoes (ninety 
francs in Paris) lent a pleasing note to my otherwise in- 
conspicuous attire, and gave me some concern, for the 
going was most rough and uncertain. 

We passed shepherds tending sheep on sharp slopes, 
a donkey-driver making his way upward with three 
donkeys all heavily laden, an umbrella-tree sheltering a 
peasant so ancient that he must have endured from 
Grecian days, and olive groves whose shadows were as 
rich as that bronze which time has favored with its 
patina. It seemed impossible that half way between 
Monte Carlo and Nice — those twin worlds of spend- 
thrift fashion and pampered vice — should endure a 
scene so idyllic. The Vale of Arcady is here; all that art 
could suggest or fancy desire, a world of simple things. 
Such scenes as this, remarked Sir Scorp, were favored 
by his great artistic admiration — Daubigny. 

We found a railway station somewhere, and then we 
got to Nice for dinner. Once more a soul-stirring argu- 
ment between Barfleur and Sir Scorp. We would take 
tea at Rumpelmeyer's — we would not take tea at 
Rumpelmeyer's. We would dine at The Regence; we 
would not dine at The Regence. We would pay I-for- 
get-how-many louis and enter the baccarat chambers of 
the Casino; we would not do anything of the sort. It 
was desired by Barfleur that I should see the wonders of 
the sea-walk with the waves spraying the protecting wall. 
It was desired by Scorp that I should look in all the 
jewelry shop windows with him and hear him instruct 
in the jeweler's art. How these matters were finally 
adjusted is lost in the haze of succeeding impressions. 
We did have tea at Rumpelmeyer's, however — a very 
commonplace but bright affair — and then we loitered 
in front of shop windows where Sir Scorp pointed out 
really astounding jewels offered to the public for fabulouj 



WE GO TO EZE 287 

sums. One great diamond he knew to have been in the 
possession of the Sultan of Turkey, and you may well 
trust his word and his understanding. A certain neck- 
lace here displayed had once been in his possession and 
was now offered at exactly ten times what he had orig- 
inally sold it for. A certain cut steel brooch — very 
large and very handsome — was designed by himself, 
and was first given as a remembrance to a friend. Result 
— endless imitation by the best shops. He dallied over 
rubies and emeralds, suggesting charming uses for them. 
And then finally we came to the Casino — the Casino 
Municipale — with its baccarat chambers, its great din- 
ing-rooms, its public lounging-room with such a world 
of green wicker chairs and tables as I have never seen. 
The great piers at Atlantic City are not so large. Being 
the height of the season, it was of course filled to over- 
flowing by a brilliant throng — cocottes and gamblers 
drawn here from all parts of Europe ; and tourists of all 
nationalities. 

Sir Scorp, as usual, in his gentle but decided way, 
raised an argument concerning what we should have for 
dinner. The mere suggestion that it should be canard 
a la presse and champagne threw him into a dyspeptic 
chill. " I will not pay for it. You can spend your 
money showing off if you choose; but I will eat a simple 
meal somewhere else." 

" Oh, no," protested Barfleur. " We are here for a 
pleasant evening. I think it important that Dreiser 
should see this. It need not be canard a la presse. We 
can have sole and a light Burgundy." 

So sole it was, and a light Burgundy, and a bottle of 
water for Sir Scorp. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

NICE 

NOT having as yet been in the Cirque prive at 
Monte Carlo, I was perhaps unduly impressed 
by the splendor of the rooms devoted to gam- 
bling in this amazingly large casino. There were eight 
hundred or a thousand people all in evening clothes, 
who had paid a heavy price for the mere privilege, of 
entering, and were now gathered about handsome green- 
covered mahogany tables under glittering and ornate 
electroliers, playing a variety of carefully devised gam- 
bling games with a fervor that at times makes martyrs 
in other causes. To a humble-minded American person 
like myself, unused to the high world of fashion, this 
spectacle was, to say the least, an interesting one. Here 
were a dozen nationalities represented by men and 
women whose hands were manicured to perfection, whose 
toilets were all that a high social occasion might re- 
quire, their faces showing in every instance a keen un-. 
derstanding of their world and how it works. Here in 
Nice, if you walk away from these centers of social 
perfection, where health and beauty and sophistication 
and money abound, the vast run of citizens are as pov- 
erty-stricken as any; but this collection of nobility and 
gentry, of millionaires, adventurers, intellectual prosti- 
tutes and savage beauties is recruited from all over the 
world. I hold that is something to see. 

The tables were fairly swarming with a fascinating 
throng all very much alike in their attitude and their 
love of the game, but still individual and interest- 
ing. I venture to say that any one of the people I saw 

288 



NICE 289 

in this room, if you saw him in a crowd on the street, 
would take your attention. A native force and self- 
sufficiency went with each one. I wondered con- 
stantly where they all came from. It takes money 
to come to the Riviera; it takes money to buy your 
way into any gambling-room. It takes money to 
gamble; and what is more it takes a certain amount 
of self-assurance and individual selection to come here 
at all. By your mere presence you are putting your- 
self in contact and contrast with a notable standard 
of social achievement. Your intellectuality, your ability 
to take care of yourself, your breeding and your subtlety 
are at once challenged — not consciously, but uncon- 
sciously. Do you really belong here? the eyes of the 
attendants ask you as you pass. And the glitter and 
color and life and beauty of the room is a constant 
challenge. 

It did not surprise me in the least that all these men 
and women in their health and attractiveness carried 
themselves with cynical, almost sneering hauteur. They 
might well do so — as the world judges these material 
things — for they are certainly far removed from the 
rank and file of the streets; and to see them extracting 
from their purses and their pockets handfuls of gold, un- 
folding layers of crisp notes that represented a thousand 
francs each, and with an almost indifferent air laying them 
on their favorite numbers or combinations was to my un- 
accustomed eye a gripping experience. Yet I was not 
interested in gambling — only in the people who played. 

I know that to the denizens of this world who are 
fascinated by chance and find their amusement in such 
playing, this atmosphere is commonplace. It was not 
so to me. I watched the women — particularly the 
beautiful women — who strolled about the chambers with 
their escorts solely to show off their fine clothes. You 



290 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

see a certain type of youth here who seems to be ex- 
perienced in this gay world that drifts from one resort 
to another, for you hear such phrases as " Oh, yes, I 
saw her at Aix-les-Bains," or, " She was at Karlsbad 
last summer." " Is that the same fellow she was with 
last year? I thought she was living with — " (this of a 
second individual). "My heaven, how well she keeps 
up!" or, "This must be her first season here — I have 
never seen her before." Two or three of these young 
bloods would follow a woman all around the rooms, 
watching her, admiring her beauty quite as a horseman 
might examine the fine points of a horse. And all the 
while you could see that she was keenly aware of the 
critical fire of these eyes. 

At the tables was another type of woman whom I 
had first casually noticed at Monte Carlo, a not too good 
looking, rather practical, and perhaps disillusioned type 
of woman — usually inclined to stoutness, as is so often 
the case with women of indolent habits and no tempera- 
ment — although, now that I think of it, I have the feel- 
ing that neither illusion nor disillusion have ever played 
much part in the lives of such as these. They looked 
to me like women who, from their youth up, had 
taken life with a grain of salt and who had never 
been carried away by anything much — neither love, 
nor fashion, nor children, nor ambition. Perhaps their 
keenest interest had always been money — the having 
and holding of it. And here they sat — not good- 
looking, not apparently magnetic — interested in chance, 
and very likely winning and losing by turns, their 
principal purpose being, I fancy, to avoid the dull- 
ness and monotony of an existence which they are 
not anxious to endure. I heard one or two deroga- 
tory comments on women of this type while I was 
abroad; but I cannot say that they did more than ap- 




My heaven, how well she keeps up, 



NICE 291 

peal to my sympathies. Supposing, to look at it from 
another point of view, you were a woman of forty-five 
or fifty. You have no family — nothing to hold you, 
perhaps, but a collection of dreary relatives, or the ennui 
of a conventional neighborhood with prejudices that 
are wearisome to your sense of liberty and freedom. 
If by any chance you have money, here on the Riviera 
is your resource. You can live in a wonderful climate 
of sun and blue water ; you can see nature clad in her 
daintiest raiment the year round ; you can see fashion 
and cosmopolitan types and exchange the gossip of all 
the world; you can go to really excellent restaurants 
— the best that Europe provides ; and for leisure, from 
ten o'clock in the morning until four or five o'clock the 
next morning, you can gamble if you choose, gamble 
silently, indifferently, without hindrance as long as your 
means endure. 

If you are of a mathematical or calculating turn of 
mind you can amuse yourself infinitely by attempting to 
solve the strange puzzle of chance — how numbers fall 
and why. It leads off at last, I know, into the abstrusities 
of chemistry and physics. The esoteric realms of the 
mystical are not more subtle tl]an the strange abnormali- 
ties of psychology that are here indulged in. Certain 
people are supposed to have a chemical and physical at- 
traction for numbers or cards. Dreams are of great 
importance. It is bad to sit by a losing person, good 
to sit by a winning one. Every conceivable eccentricity 
of thought in relation to personality is here indulged 
in; and when all is said and done, in spite of the wonders 
of their cobwebby calculations, it comes to about the 
same old thing — they win and lose, win and lose, win 
and lose. 

Now and then some interesting personality — stranger, 
youth, celebrity, or other — wins heavily or loses heavily; 



292 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

in which case, if he plunges fiercely on, his table will be 
surrounded by a curious throng, their heads craning over 
each other's shoulders, while he piles his gold on his 
combinations. Such a man or woman for the time being 
becomes an intensely dramatic figure. He is aware of 
the audacity of the thing he is doing, and he moves 
with conscious gestures — the manner of a grand 
seigneur. I saw one such later — in the Cirque prive 
at Monte Carlo — a red-bearded man of fifty — tall, in- 
tense, graceful. It was rumored that he was a prince 
out of Russia — almost any one can be a prince out of 
Russia at Monte Carlo! He had stacks of gold and he 
distributed it with a lavish hand. He piled it in little 
golden towers over a score of numbers; and when his 
numbers fell wrong his towers fell with them, and the 
croupier raked great masses of metal into his basket. 
There was not the slightest indication on his pale im- 
passive face that the loss or the gain was of the slightest 
interest to him. He handed crisp bills to the clerk in 
charge of the bank and received more gold to play his 
numbers. When he wearied, after a dozen failures — a 
breathing throng watching him with moist lips and damp, 
eager eyes — he rose and strolled forth to another cham- 
ber, rolling a cigarette as he went. He had lost thou- 
sands and thousands. 

The next morning it was lovely and sunshiny again. 
Sitting out on my balcony high over the surrounding 
land, commanding as it did all of Monte Carlo, the bay 
of Mentone and Cap Martin, I made many solemn reso- 
lutions. This gay life here was meretricious and arti- 
ficial, I decided. Gambling was a vice, in spite of Sir 
Scorp's lofty predilection for it; it drew to and around 
it the allied viciousness of the world, gormandizing, 
harlotry, wastefulness, vain-glory. I resolved here in 
the cool morning that I would reform. I would see 



NICE 293 

something of the surrounding country and then leave 
for Italy where I would forget all this. 

I started out with Barfleur about ten to see the Oceano- 
graphical Museum and to lunch at the Princess, but the 
day did not work out exactly as we planned. We visited 
the Oceanographical Museum; but I found it amazingly 
dull — the sort of a thing a prince making his money 
out of gambling would endow. It may have vast scien- 
tific ramifications, but I doubt it. A meager collection 
of insects and dried specimens quickly gave me a head- 
ache. The only case that really interested me was the 
one containing a half-dozen octopi of large size. I stood 
transfixed before their bulbous centers and dull, muddy, 
bronze-green arms, studded with suckers. I can imagine 
nothing so horrible as to be seized upon by one of these 
things, and I fairly shivered as I stood in front of the 
case. Barfleur contemplated solemnly the possibility of 
his being attacked by one of them, monocle and all. He 
foresaw a swift end to his career. 

We came out into the sunlight and viewed with relief, 
by contrast with the dull museum, the very new and 
commonplace cathedral — oh, exceedingly poorly exe- 
cuted — and the castle or palace or residence of His 
Highness, the Prince of Monaco. I cannot imagine 
why Europe tolerates this man with his fine gambling 
privileges unless it is that the different governments look 
with opposition on the thought of any other government 
having so fine a source of wealth. France should have 
it by rights; and it would be suitable that the French 
temperament should conduct such an institution. The 
palace of the Prince of Monaco was as dull as his church 
and his museum; and the Monacoan Anny drawn up in 
front of his residence for their morning exercise looked 
like a company of third-rate French policemen. 

However I secured as fine an impression of the beauty 



294 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

of Monaco and the whole coast from this height, as I 
received at any time during my stay; for it is like the 
jewel of a ring projecting out of the sea. You climb up 
to the Oceanographical Museum and the palace by a 
series of stairways and walks that from time to time 
bring you out to the sheer edge of the cliff overlooking 
the blue waters below. There is expensive gardening 
done here, everywhere; for you find vines and flowers 
and benches underneath the shade of palms and um- 
brella trees where you can sit and look out over the sea. 
Lovely panoramas confront you in every direction; and 
below, perhaps as far down as three and four hundred 
feet, you can see and hear the waves breaking and the 
foam eddying about the rocks. The visitor to Monte 
Carlo, I fancy, is not greatly disturbed about scenery, 
however. Such walks as these are empty and still while 
the Casino is packed to the doors. The gaming-tables 
are the great center ; and to these we ourselves invariably 
returned. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY 

MY days in Monte Carlo after this were only 
four, exactly. In spite of my solemn resolu- 
tions of the morning the spirit of this gem- 
like world got into my bones by three o'clock; and at 
four, when we were having tea at the Riviera Palace 
Hotel high above the Casino, I was satisfied that I 
should like to stay here for months. Barfleur, as usual, 
was full of plans for enjoyment; and he insisted that 
I had not half exhausted the charms of the place. We 
should go to some old monastery at Laghet where 
miracles of healing were performed, and to Cannes and 
Beaulieu in order to see the social life there. 

A part of one of these days we spent viewing a per- 
formance in Mentone. Another day Barfleur and I went 
to Laghet and Nice, beginning with a luncheon at the 
Riviera Palace and winding up at the Hotel des Fleurs. 
The last day we were in the Casino, gambling cheer- 
fully for a little while, and then on the terrace viewing 
the pigeon shooting, which Barfleur persistently refused 
to contemplate. This (to me) brutal sport was evi- 
dently fascinating to many, for the popping of guns was 
constant. It is so curious how radically our views differ 
in this world as to what constitutes evil and good. To 
Scorp this was a legitimate sport. The birds were ulti- 
mately destined for pies anyhow ; why not kill them here 
in this manner? To me the crippling of the perfect 
winged things was a crime. I would never be one to 
hold a gun in such a sport. 

295 



296 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

It was this last day in the Cafe de Paris that Barfleur 
and I encountered Marcelle and Mme. Y., our compan- 
ions of that jfirst dinner in Paris. Barfleur was leaving 
for London, Scorp was to stay on at Monte Carlo, and 
for the first time I faced the prospect of traveling alone. 
Acting on impulse I turned to Marcelle and said: 
" Come with me as far as Ventimiglia," never thinking 
for a moment that she would. " Oui/' she replied, " oiti. 
Old," and seemed very cheerful over the prospect. 

Marcelle arrived some fifteen minutes before my train 
was due, but she was not to speak to me until we were 
on the train. It took some manoeuvering to avoid the 
suspicions of Scorp. 

Barfleur left for the north at four-thirty, assuring me 
that we would meet in Paris in April and ride at Fon- 
tainebleau, and that we would take a walking tour in 
England. After he was gone, Scorp and I walked to 
and fro and then it was that Marcelle appeared. I had 
to smile as I walked with Scorp, thinking how wrathful 
he would have been if he had known that every so often 
we were passing Marcelle, who gazed demurely the other 
way. The platforms, as usual, were alive with passengers 
with huge piles of baggage. My train was a half hour 
late and it was getting dark. Some other train which 
was not bound for Rome entered, and Marcelle signaled 
to know whether she was to get into that. I shook my 
head and hunted up the Cook's tourist agent, always to 
be found on these foreign platforms, and explained to 
him that he was to go to the young lady in the blue 
suit and white walking-shoes and tell her that the train 
was a half hour late and ask her if she cared to wait. 
With quite an American sang-froid he took in the situa- 
tion at once, and wanted to know how far she was going. 
I told him Ventimiglia and he advised that she get off 
at Garaban in order to catch the first train back. He 



A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY 297 

departed, and presently returned, cutting me out from 
the company of Sir Scorp by a very wise look of the 
eye, and informed me that the lady would wait and 
would go. I promptly gave him a franc for his trouble. 
My pocket was bulging with Italian silver lire and 
paper five- and ten-lire pieces which I had secured the 
day before. Finally my train rolled in and I took one 
last look at the sea in the fading light and entered. Sir 
Scorp gave me parting instructions as to simple restau- 
rants that I would find at different places in Italy — not 
the showy and expensive cafes, beloved of Barfleur. He 
wanted me to save money on food and have my portrait 
painted by Mancini, which I could have done, he assured 
me, with a letter from him. He looked wisely around 
the platform to see that there was no suspicious lady 
anywhere in the foreground and said he suspected one 
might be going with me. 

"Oh, Scorp," I said, "how could you? Besides, I 
am very poor now." 

"The ruling passion — strong in poverty," he com- 
mented, and waved me a farewell. 

I walked forward through the train looking for my 
belongings and encountered Marcelle. She was eager 
to explain by signs that the Cook's man had told her to 
get off at Garaban. 

"" M'sieur Thomas Cook, il ni'a dit — il faiit que je 
descends a Garaban — pas Ventimiglia — Garaban." 
She understood well enough that if she wanted to get 
back to Monte Carlo early in the evening she would 
have to make this train, as the next was not before 
ten o'clock. 

I led the way to a table in the dining-car still vacant, 
and we talked as only people can talk who have no com- 
mon language. By the most astonishing efforts Marcelle 
made it known that she would not stay at Monte Carlo 



298 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

very long now, and that if I wanted her to come to 
Florence when I got there she would. Also she kept 
talking about Fontainebleau and horseback riding in 
April. She imitated a smart rider holding the reins 
with one hand and clucking to the horse with her lips. 
She folded her hands expressively to show how heavenly 
it would be. Then she put her right hand over her eyes 
and waved her left hand to indicate that there were 
lovely vistas which we could contemplate. Finally she 
extracted all her bills from the Hotel de Paris ■ — and 
they were astonishing — to show me how expensive her 
life was at Monte Carlo; but I refused to be impressed. 
It did not make the least difference, however, in her atti- 
tude or her mood. She was just as cheerful as ever, and 
repeated " Avril — Fontainebleau," as the train stopped 
and she stepped off. She reached up and gave me an 
affectionate farewell kiss. The last I saw of her she was 
standing, her arms akimbo, her head thrown smartly 
back, looking after the train. 

It was due to a railroad wreck about twenty miles 
beyond Ventimiglia that I awe my acquaintance with 
one of the most interesting men I have met in years, a 
man who was very charming to me afterwards in Rome, 
but before that I should like to relate how I first really 
entered Italy. One afternoon, several days before, Bar- 
fleur and I paid a flying visit to Ventimiglia, some 
twenty miles over the border, a hill city and the agreed 
customs entry city between France and Italy. No train 
leaving France in this region, so I learned, stopped be- 
fore it reached Ventimiglia, and none leaving Ventimi- 
glia stopped before it entered France, and once there cus- 
toms inspectors seized upon one and examined one's bag- 
gage. If you have no baggage you are almost an object 
of suspicion in Italy. 



A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY 299 

On the first visit we came to scale the walls of this 
old city which was much like Eze and commanded the 
sea from a great eminence. But after Eze it was not 
Ventimiglia that interested me so much as the fact that 
Italy was so different from France. In landing at Fish- 
guard I had felt the astonishing difference between Eng- 
land and the United States. In landing at Calais the 
atmosphere of England had fallen from me like a cloak 
and France — its high color and enthusiasm — had suc- 
ceeded to it. Here this day, stepping off the train at 
Ventimiglia only a few miles from Monte Carlo, I was 
once more astonished at the sharp change that had come 
over the spirit of man. Here were Italians, not French, 
dark, vivid, interesting little men who, it seemed to me, 
were so much more inclined to strut and stare than the 
French that they appeared to be vain. They were keen, 
temperamental, avid, like the French but strange to say 
not so gay, so light-hearted, so devil-may-care. 

Italy, it seemed to me at once, was much poorer than 
France and Barfleur was very quick to point it out. " A 
different people," he commented, " not like the French, 
much darker and more mysterious. See the cars — 
how poor they are. You will note that everywhere. 
And the buildings, the trains — the rolling stock is not so 
good. Look at the houses. The life here is more pov- 
erty-stricken. Italy is poor — very. I like it and I 
don't. Some things are splendid. M)^ mother adores 
Rome. I crave the French temperament. It is so much 
more light-hearted." So he rambled on. 

It was all true — accurate and keenly observed. I could 
not feel that I was anywhere save in a land that was 
seeking to rehabilitate itself but that had a long way to 
go. The men — the officials and soldiery of whom there 
were a legion clad in remarkable and even astonishing 
uniforms, appealed to my eye, but the souls of them to 



300 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

begin with, did not take my fancy. I felt them to be 
suspicious and greedy. Here for the first time I saw 
the uniform of the ItaHan hersaglicri: smart-looking in 
long capes, round hats of shiny leather with glossy green 
rooster feathers, and carrying short swords. 

This night as I crossed the border after leaving Gara- 
ban I thought of all I had seen the day I came with 
Barfleur. When we reached Ventimiglia it was pitch 
dark and being alone and speaking no Italian whatsoever, 
I was confused by the thought of approaching difficulties. 

Presently a customs inspector descended on me — a 
large, bearded individual who by signs made me under- 
stand that I had to go to the baggage car and open my 
trunk. I went. Torches supplied the only light: I felt 
as though I were in a bandit's cave. Yet I came through 
well enough. Nothing contraband was found. I went 
back and sat down, plunging into a Baedeker for Italian 
wisdom and wishing gloomily that I had read more his- 
tory than I had. 

Somewhere beyond Ventimiglia the train came to a 
dead stop in the dark, and the next morning we were still 
stalled in the same place. I had risen early, under the 
impression that I was to get out quickly, but was waved 
back by the porter who repeated over and over, "Beau- 
coup de retard!" I understood that much but I did not 
understand what caused it, or that I would not arrive 
in Pisa until two in the afternoon. I went into the 
dining-car and there encountered one of the most obstrep- 
erous English women that I have ever met. She was 
obviously of the highly intellectual class, but so haughty 
in her manner and so loud-spoken in her opinions that 
she was really offensive. She was having her morning 
fruit and rolls and some chops and was explaining to a 
lady, who was with her, much of the character of Italy 
as she knew it. She was of the type that never accepts 



A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY 301 

an opinion from any one, but invariably gives her own 
or corrects any that may be volunteered. At one time I 
think she must have been attractive, for she was mod- 
erately tall and graceful, but her face had become waxy 
and sallow, and a little thin — I will not say hard, 
although it was anything but ingratiating. My one 
wish was that she would stop talking and leave the 
dining-car, she talked so loud; but she stayed on until 
her friend and her husband arrived. I took him to be 
her husband by the way she contradicted him. 

He was a very pleasing, intellectual person — the type 
of man, I thought, who would complacently endure such 
a woman. He was certainly not above the medium in 
height, quite well filled out, and decidedly phlegmatic. 
I should have said from my first glance that he never 
took any exercise of any kind ; and his face had that in- 
teresting pallor which comes from much brooding over 
the midnight oil. He had large, soft, lustrous gray 
eyes and a mop of gray hair which hung low over a 
very high white forehead. I must repeat here that I 
am the poorest judge of people whom I am going to like 
of any human being. Now and then I take to a person 
instantly, and my feeling endures for years. On the 
other hand I have taken the most groundless oppositions 
based on nothing at all to people of whom subsequently 
I have become very fond. Perhaps my groundless oppo- 
sition in this case was due to the fact that the gentle- 
man was plainly submissive and overborne by his loud- 
talking wife. Anyhow I gave him a single glance and 
dismissed him from my thoughts. I was far more in- 
terested in a stern, official-looking Englishman with 
white hair who ordered his bottle of Perrier in a low, 
rusty voice and cut his orange up into small bits with a 
knife. 

Presently I heard a German explaining to his wife 



302 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

about a wreck ahead. We were just starting now, 
perhaps twenty-five or thirty miles from Ventimiglia, 
and were dashing in and out of rocky tunnels and mo- 
mentarily bursting into wonderful views of walled caves 
and sunlit sweeps of sea. The hill-town, the striped 
basilica with its square, many-arched campanile was 
coming into view. I was delighted to see open plains 
bordered in the distance by snow-capped mountains, and 
dotted sparsely with little huts of stone and brick — how 
old. Heaven only knows. " Here once the Tuscan shep- 
herds strayed." As Barfleur said, Italy was much 
poorer than France. The cars and stations seemed 
shabbier, the dress of the inhabitants much poorer. I 
saw natives, staring idly at the cars as we flashed past, 
or taking freight away from the platforms in rude carts 
drawn by oxen. Many of the vehicles appeared to be 
rattle-trap, dusty, unpainted; and some miles this side of 
Genoa — our first stop — we ran into a region where it 
had been snowing and the ground was covered with a wet 
slushy snowfall. After Monte Carlo, with its lemon and 
orange trees and its lovely palms, this was a sad come- 
down; and I could scarcely realize that we were not so 
much as a hundred miles away and going southward 
toward Rome at that. I often saw, however, distant 
hills crowned with a stronghold or a campanile in high 
browns and yellows, which made up for the otherwise 
poor foreground. Often we dashed through a cave, 
protected by high surrounding walls of rock, where the 
palm came into view again and where one could see how 
plainly these high walls of stone made for a tropic 
atmosphere. I heard the loud-voiced English woman 
saying, " It is such a delight to see the high colors again. 
England is so dreary. I never feel it so much as when 
we come down through here." 

We were passing through a small Italian town, rich in 



A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY 303 

whites, pinks, browns and blues, a world of clothes-lines 
showing between rows of buildings, and the crowds, 
pure Italian in type, plodding to and fro along the 
streets. It was nice to see windows open here and the 
sunshine pouring down and making dark shadows. I 
saw one Italian woman, in a pink-dotted dress partly 
covered by a bright yellow apron, looking out of a 
window; and then it was that I first got the tang of 
Italy — the thing that I felt afterwards in Rome and 
Florence and Assisi and Perugia — that wonderful love 
of color that is not rampant but just deliciously selective, 
giving the eye something to feed on when it least ex- 
pects it. That is Italy! 

When nearly all the diners had left the car the English 
lady left also and her husband remained to smoke. He 
was not so very far removed from me, but he came a 
little nearer, and said : " The Italians must have their 
striped churches and their wash lines or they would n't 
be happy." 

It was some time before he volunteered another sug- 
gestion, which was that the Italians along this part of 
the coast had a poor region to farm. I got up and left 
presently because I did not want to have anything to do 
with his wife. I was afraid that I might have to talk 
to her, which seemed to me a ghastly prospect. 

I sat in my berth and read the history of art as it re- 
lated to Florence, Genoa, and Pisa, interrupting my para- 
graphs with glances at every interesting scene. The 
value of the prospect changed first from one side of the 
train to the other, and I went out into the corridor to 
open a window and look out. We passed through a 
valley where it looked as though grapes were flourishing 
splendidly, and my Englishman came out and told me 
the name of the place, saying that it was good wine that 
was made there. He was determined to talk to me 



304 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

whether I would or no, and so I decided to make the 
best of it. It just occurred to me that he might be the 
least bit lonely, and, seeing that I was very curious about 
the country through which we were passing, that he 
might know something about Italy. The moment it 
dawned upon me that he might be helpful to me in this 
respect I began to ask him questions, and I found his 
knowledge to be delightfully wide. He knew Italy 
thoroughly. As we proceeded he described how the 
country was divided into virtually three valleys, sepa- 
rated by two mountain ranges, and what the lines of its 
early, almost prehistoric, development, had been. He 
knew where it was that Shelley had come to spend his 
summers, and spots that had been preferred by Brown- 
ing and other famous Englishmen. He talked of the 
cities that lie in a row down the center of Italy — 
Perugia, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Piacenza and 
Milan — of the fact that Italy had no educational system 
whatsoever and that the priests were bitterly opposed to 
it. He was sorry that I was not going to stop at Spezia, 
because at Spezia the climate was very mild and the gulf 
very beautiful. He was delighted to think that I was go- 
ing to stop at Pisa and see the cathedral and the Bap- 
tistery. He commented on the charms of Genoa — 
commercialized as it had been these later years — saying 
that there was a very beautiful Campo Santo and that 
some of the palaces of the quarreling Guelphs and Ghibel- 
lines still remaining were well worth seeing. When we 
passed the quarries of Carrara he told nie of their age 
and of how endless the quantity of marble still was. He 
was going to Rome with his wife and he wanted to know 
if I would not look him up, giving me the name of a hotel 
where he lived by the season. I caught a note of remark- 
able erudition ; for we fell to discussing religion and 
priestcraft and the significance of government generally, 



A FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY 305 

and he astonished me by the breadth of his knowledge. 
We passed to the subject of metaphysics from which all 
religions spring; and then I saw how truly philosophic 
and esoteric he was. His mind knew no country, his 
knowledge no school. He led off by easy stages into 
vague speculations as to the transcendental character of 
race impulses ; and I knew I had chanced upon a profound 
scholar as well as a very genial person. I was very 
sorry now that I had been so rude to him. By the time 
M^e reached Pisa we were fast friends, and he told me that 
he had a distinguished friend, now a resident of 
Assisi, and that he would give me a letter to him which 
would bring me charming intellectual companionship for 
a day or two. I promised to seek him out at his hotel; 
and as we passed the Leaning Tower and the Baptistery, 
not so very distant from the railroad track as we entered 
Pisa, he gave me his card. I riecognized the name as 
connected with some intellectual labors of a most dis- 
tinguished character and I said so. He accepted the 
recognition gracefully and asked me to be sure and come. 
He would show me around Rome. 

I gathered my bags and stepped out upon the platform 
at Pisa, eager to see what I could in the few hours that I 
wished to remain. 



CHAPTER XXX 

A STOP AT PISA 

BAEDEKER says that Pisa has a population of 
twenty-seven thousand two hundred people and 
that it is a quiet town. It is. I caught the 
spell of a score of places like this as I walked out into 
the open square facing the depot. The most amazing 
botch of a monument I ever saw in my life I saw here — 
a puffing, swelling, strutting representation of Umberto I, 
legs apart, whiskers rampant, an amazing cockade, all 
the details of a gaudy unifonn, a breast like a pouter- 
pigeon — outrageous ! It was about twelve or thirteen 
times as large as an ordinary man and not more than 
twelve or fifteen feet from the ground ! He looked like 
a gorgon, a monster to eat babies, ready to leap upon you 
with loud cries. I thought, " In Heaven's name ! is this 
what Italy is coming to ! How can it brook such an 
atrocity? " 

With the spirit of adventure strong within me I de- 
cided to find the campanile and the cathedral for my- 
self. I had seen it up the railroad track, and, ignoring 
appealing guides with urgent, melancholy eyes, I struck 
up walled streets of brown and gray and green with 
solid, tight-closed, wooden shutters, cobble pavements and 
noiseless, empty sidewalks. They were not exactly nar- 
row, which astonished me a little, for I had not learned 
that only the older portions of growing Italian cities 
have narrow streets. All the newer sections which sur- 
round such modern things as depots are wide and sup- 
posedly up to date. There was a handsome trolley-car 
just leaving as I came out, a wide-windowed shiny thing 

306 



A STOP AT PISA 307 

which illustrated just how fine trolley-cars can be, even 
in Italy. I had learned from my Baedeker that Pisa was 
on the Arno, I wanted to see the Arno because of Flor- 
ence and Dante. Coming from Ventimiglia I had read 
the short history of Pisa given in Baedeker — its wars 
with Genoa, the building of its cathedral. It was in- 
teresting to learn that the Pisans had expelled the 
Saracens from Sardinia in 1025, and destroyed their 
fleet in 1063 near Palermo, that once they were the most 
powerful adherents of the Ghibellines, and how terribly 
they were defeated by the Genoese near Leghorn in 1284. 
I pumped up a vast desire to read endless volumes con- 
cerning the history of Italy, now that I was here on the 
ground, and when it could not be done on the instant. 
My book told me that the great cathedral was erected 
after the naval victory of the Pisans at Palermo and 
that the ancient bronze gates were very wonderful. I 
knew of the Campo Santo with its sacred earth brought 
from Palestine, and of the residence here of Niccolo 
Pisano. His famous hexagonal pulpit in the Baptistery- 
is a commonplace — almost as much so as the Leaning 
Tower. I did not know that Galileo had availed himself 
of the oblique position of the tower to make his experi- 
ments regarding the laws of gravitation until I read 
it in my precious Baedeker, but it was a fact none the 
less delightful for encountering it there. 

Let me here and now, once and for all, sing my praises 
of Baedeker and his books. When I first went abroad 
it was with a lofty air that I considered Barfleur's refer- 
ences to the fact that Baedeker on occasion would be of 
use to me. He wanted me to go through Europe getting 
my impressions quite fresh and not disturbed by too much 
erudition such as could be gathered from books. He 
might have trusted me. My longing for erudition was 
constantly great, but my willingness to burn the midnight 



3o8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

oil in order to get it was exceedingly small. It was 
only at the last moment, when I was confronted with 
some utterly magnificent object, that I thumbed fever- 
ishly through my one source of supply — the ever-to-be- 
praised and blessed Karl Baedeker — his books. I think 
the German temperament is at its best when it is gath- 
ering all the data about anything and putting it in 
apple-pie order before you. I defy the most sneering 
and supercilious scholars and savants to look at these 
marvelous volumes and not declare them wonderful. 
There is no color in Baedeker anywhere, no joke, no 
emotion, no artistic enthusiasm. It is a plain state- 
ment of delightful fact — fact so pointless without the 
object before you, so invaluable when you are standing 
open-mouthed wondering what it is all about ! Trust 
the industrious, the laborious, the stupendous, the pains- 
taking Baedeker to put his finger on the exact fact and 
tell you not what you might, but what you must, know 
to really enjoy it. Take this little gem from page 430 of 
his volume on northern Italy. It concerns the famous 
Baptistery which I was so eagerly seeking. 

The interior (visitors knock at the principal entrance; adm. 
free) rests on eight columns and four piers, above w^hich there 
is a single triforium. In the center is a marble octagonal Font 
by Guido Bigarelli of Como (1246) and near it the famous 
hexagonal PULPIT borne by seven columns, by Niccolo Pisano, 
1260. The reliefs (comp. p.p. XXXIX, 432) on the pulpit are: 
(i) Annunciation and Nativity; (2) Adoration of the Magi; 
(3) Presentation in the Temple; (4) Crucifixion; (5) Last 
Judgment; in the spandrels. Prophets and Evangelists; above 
the columns, the Virtues. — Fine echo. 

Dry as dried potatoes, say you. Exactly. But go 
to Italy without a Baedeker in your hand or precious 
knowledge stored up from other sources and see what 
happens. Karl Baedeker is one of the greatest geniuses 



I 



A STOP AT PISA 309 

Germany has ever produced. He knows how to give 
you what you want, and has spread the fame of German 
thoroughness broadcast. I count him a great human 
benefactor; and his native city ought to erect a monu- 
ment to him. Its base ought to be a bronze Hbrary 
stand full of bronze Baedekers ; and to this good pur- 
pose I will contribute freely and liberally according to 
my means. 

When I reached the Arno, as I did by following this 
dull vacant street, I was delighted to stop and look at 
its simple stone bridges, its muddy yellow water not 
unhke that O'f the New River in West Virginia, the plain, 
still, yellow houses lining its banks as far as I could see. 
The one jarring note was the steel railroad bridge which 
the moderns have built over it. It was a little con- 
soling to look at an old moss-covered fortress now oc- 
cupied as a division headquarters by the Italian army, 
and at a charming old gate which was part of a forti- 
fied palace left over from Pisa's warring days. The po- 
tential force of Italy was overcoming me by leaps and 
bounds, and my mind was full of the old and powerful 
Italian families of which the Middle Ages are so red- 
olent. I could not help thinking of the fact that the 
Renaissance had, in a way, its beginning here in the per- 
sonality of Niccolo Pisano, and of how wonderful the fu- 
ture of Italy may yet be. There was an air of fallow 
sufficiency about it that caused me to feel that, although 
it might be a dull, unworked field this year or this cen- 
tury, another might see it radiant with power and mag- 
nificence. It is a lordly and artistic land — and I felt it 
here at Pisa. 

Wandering along the banks of the Arno, I came to 
a spot whence I could see the collection of sacred build- 
ings, far more sacred to art than to religion. They 
were amazingly impressive, even from this distance, tow- 



3IO A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ering above the low houses. A little nearer, standing on 
a space of level grass, the boxing of yellow and brown 
and blue Italian houses about them like a frame, they 
set my mouth agape with wonder and delight. I walked 
into Pisa thinking it was too bad that any place so digni- 
fied should have fallen so low as to be a dull, poverty- 
stricken city; but I remained to think that if the Italians 
are wise (and they are wise and new-born also) they 
will once more have their tremendous cities and their 
great artistic inheritances in the bargain. I think now 
that perhaps of all the lovely things I saw abroad the 
cathedral and tower and baptistery and campo santo of 
Pisa grouped as they are in one lovely, spacious, green- 
sodded area, are the loveliest and most perfect of all. It 
does not matter to me that the cathedral at Pisa is not a 
true Gothic cathedral, as some have pointed out. It is 
better than that — it is Italian Gothic ; with those amaz- 
ing artistic conceptions, a bell-tower and a baptistery and 
a campo santo thrown in. Trust the Italians to do any- 
thing that they do grandly, with a princely lavishness. 
As I stepped first into this open square with these ex- 
quisite jewels of cream-colored stone pulsating under the 
rays of an evening sun, it was a spectacle that evoked 
a rare thrill of emotion, such as great art must always 
evoke. There they stood — fretted, fluted, colonnaded, 
crowded with lovely traceries, studded with lovely mar- 
bles, and showing in every line and detail all that loving 
enthusiasm which is the first and greatest characteristic 
of artistic genius. I can see those noble old first citi- 
zens who wanted Pisa to be great, calling to their aid 
the genius of such men as Pisano and Bonannus of Pisa 
and William of Innsbruck and Diotisalvi and all the 
noble company of talent that followed to plan, to carve, 
to color and to decorate. To me it is a far more im- 
pressive and artistic thing than St. Peter's in Rome. It 



A STOP AT PISA 311 

has a reserve and an artistic subtlety which exceeds 
the finest Gothic cathedral in the world. Canterbury, 
Amiens and Rouen are bursts of imagination and emo- 
tion; but the collection of buildings at Pisa is the re- 
served, subtle, princely calculation of a great architect 
and a great artist. It does not matter if it represents 
the handiwork, the judgment and the taste of a hun- 
dred men of genius. It may be without the wildfire of a 
cathedral like that at Cologne, but it approximates the 
high classic reserve of a temple of Pallas Athene. It is 
Greek in its dignity and beauty, not Christian and Gothic 
in its fire and zeal. As I think of it, I would not give it 
for anything I have seen; I would not have missed it 
if I had been compelled to sacrifice almost everything 
else; and the Italian Government has done well to take 
it and all similar achievements under its protection and 
to declare that however religion may wax or wane this 
thing shall not be disturbed. It is a great, a noble, a 
beautiful thing; and as such should be preserved forever. 
The interior of the basilica was to me a soothing 
dream of beauty. There are few interiors anywhere 
in this world that truly satisfy, but this is one of them. 
White marble turned yellow by age is gloriously satis- 
fying. This interior, one hundred feet in diameter and 
one hundred and seventy-nine feet high, has all the 
smooth perfection of a blown bubble. Its curve recedes 
upward and inward so gracefully that the eye has no 
quarrel with any point. My mind was fascinated by 
the eight columns and four piers which seemingly sup- 
port it all and by the graceful open gallery or arcade in 
the wall resting above the arches below. The octagonal 
baptismal font, so wide and so beautiful, and the grace- 
ful pulpit by Pisano, with its seven columns and three 
friendly-looking lions, is utterly charming. While I 
stood and stroked the heads of these amiable-looking 



312 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

beasts, a guide who had seen me enter came in, and with- 
out remark of any kind began slowly and clearly to 
articulate the scale, in order that I might hear the " fine 
echo " mentioned by Baedeker. Long practice had made 
him perfect, for by giving each note sufficient space to 
swell and redouble and quadruple itself he finally man- 
aged to fill the great chamber with a charming harmony, 
rich and full, not unlike that of a wind-harp. 

If I fell instantly in love with the Baptistery, I was 
equally moved by the Leaning Tower — a perfect thing. 
If man is wise and thoughtful he can keep the wonders 
of great beauty by renewing them as they wear; but 
will he remain wise and thoughtful? So little is thought 
of true beauty. Think of the guns thundering on the 
Parthenon and of Napoleon carrying away the horses 
of St. Mark's! I mounted the steps of the tower (one 
hundred and seventy-nine feet, the same height as the 
Baptistery), walking out on and around each of its six 
balustrades and surveying the surrounding landscape 
rich in lovely mountains showing across a plain. The 
tower tilts fourteen feet out of plumb, and as I walked 
its circular arcades at different heights I had the feel- 
ing that I might topple over and come floundering down 
to the grass below. As I rose higher the view increased 
in loveliness; and at the top I found an old bell-man 
who called my attention by signs to the fact that the 
heaviest of the seven bells was placed on the side oppo- 
site the overhanging wall of the tower to balance it. He 
also pointed in the different directions which presented 
lovely views, indicating to the west and southwest the 
mouth of the Arno, the Mediterranean, Leghorn and the 
Tuscan Islands, to the north the Alps and Mount Pisanr 
where the Carrara quarries are, and to the south, Rome. 
Some Italian soldiers from the neighboring barracks 
came up as I went down and entered the cathedral, which 



A STOP AT PISA 313 

interiorly was as beautiful as any which I saw abroad. 
The Italian Gothic is so much more perfectly spaced on 
the interior than the Northern Gothic and the great flat 
roof, coffered in gold, is so much richer and more sooth- 
ing in its aspect. The whole church is of pure marble 
yellowed by age, relieved, however, by black and colored 
bands. 

I came away after a time and entered the Campo 
Santo, the loveliest thing of its kind that I saw in Eu- 
rope. I never knew, strange to relate, that graveyards 
were made, or could be made, into anything so impres- 
sively artistic. This particular ground was nothing 
more than an oblong piece of grass, set with several 
cypress trees and surrounded with a marble arcade, be- 
low the floor and against the walls of which are placed 
the marbles, tombs and sarcophagi. The outer walls are 
solid, windowless and decorated on the inside with those 
naive, light-colored frescoes of the pupils of Giotto. 
The inner wall is full of arched, pierced windows with 
many delicate columns through which you look to the 
green grass and the cypress trees and the perfectly 
smooth, ornamented dome at one end. I have paid my 
tribute to the cypress trees, so I will only say that here, 
as always, wherever I saw them — one or many — I 
thrilled with delight. They are as fine artistically as 
any of the monuments or bronze doors or carved pul- 
pits or perfect baptismal fonts. They belong where the 
great artistic impulse of Italy has always put them — - 
side by side with perfect things. For me they added the 
one final, necessary touch to this realm of romantic mem- 
ory. I see them now and I hear them sigh. 

I walked back to my train through highly colored, 
winding, sidewalkless, quaint-angled streets crowded 
with houses, the fagades of which we in America to-day 
attempt to imitate on our Fifth Avenues and Michigan 



314 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Avenues and Rittenhouse Squares. The medieval Ital- 
ians knew so well what to do with the door and the 
window and the cornice and the wall space. The size 
of their window is what they choose to make it, and 
the door is instinctively put where it will give the last 
touch of elegance. How often have I mentally ap- 
plauded ihat selective artistic discrimination and reserve 
which will use one panel of colored stone or one niche or 
one lamp or one window, and no more. There is space 
■ — lots of it — unbroken until you have had just enough ; 
and then it will be relieved just enough by a marble 
plaque framed in the walls, a coat-of-arms, a window, a 
niche. I would like to run on in my enthusiasm and de- 
scribe that gem of a palace that is now the Palazzo Com- 
munale at Perugia, but I will refrain. Only these streets 
in Pisa were rich with angles and arcades and wonderful 
doorways and solid plain fronts which were at once 
substantial and elegant. Trust the Italian of an older 
day to do well whatever he did at all; and I for one do 
not think that this instinct is lost. It will burst into 
flame again in the future ; or save greatly what it already 
possesses. 



i 



CHAPTER XXXI 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 

AS we approached Rome in the darkness I was on 
the qui vive for my first glimpse of it ; and impa- 
tient with wonder as to what the morning would 
reveal. I was bound for the Hotel Continental — the 
abode, for the winter at least, of Barfleur's mother, the 
widow of an Oxford don. I expected to encounter a 
severe and conservative lady of great erudition who 
would eye the foibles of Paris and Monte Carlo with 
severity. 

" My mother," Barfleur said, " is a very conservative 
person. She is greatly concerned about me. When you 
see her, try to cheer her up, and give her a good report 
of me. . I don't doubt you will find her very interesting; 
and it is just possible that she will take a fancy to you. 
She is subject to violent likes and dislikes." 

I fancied Mrs. Barfleur as a rather large woman with a 
smooth placid countenance, a severe intellectual eye that 
would see through all my shams and make-believes on 
the instant. 

It was midnight before the train arrived. It was rain- 
ing; and as I pressed my nose to the window-pane view- 
ing the beginning lamps, I saw streets and houses come 
into view — apartment houses, if you please, and street 
cars and electric arc-lights, and asphalt-paved streets, 
and a general atmosphere of modernity. We might have 
been entering Cleveland for any particular variation it 
presented. But just when I was commenting to myself 
on the strangeness of entering ancient Rome in a mod- 
ern compartment car and of seeing box cars and engines, 

31S 



3i6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

coal cars and flat cars loaded with heavy material, gath- 
ered on a score of parallel tracks, a touch of the ancient 
Rome came into view for an instant and was gone again 
in the dark and rain. It was an immense, desolate tomb, 
its arches flung heavenward in great curves, its rounded 
dome rent and jagged by time. Nothing but ancient 
Rome could have produced so imposing a ruin and it 
came over me in an instant, fresh and clear like an elec- 
tric shock, like a dash of cold water, that this was truly 
all that was left of the might and glory of an older day. 
I recall now with delight the richness of that sensation. 
Rome that could build the walls and the baths in far 
Manchester and London, Rome that could occupy the Ile- 
St.-Louis in Paris as an outpost, that could erect the im- 
mense column to Augustus on the heights above Monte 
Carlo, Rome that could reach to the uppermost waters 
of the Nile and the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates 
and rule, was around me. Here it was — the city to 
which St. Paul had been brought, where St. Peter had 
sat as the first father of the Church, where the first Latins 
had set up their shrine to Romulus and Remus, and wor- 
shiped the she-wolf that had nourished them. Yes, this 
was Rome, truly enough, in spite of the apartment houses 
and the street cars and the electric lights. I came into 
the great station at five minutes after twelve amid a 
clamor of Italian porters and a crowd of disembarking 
passengers. I made my way to the baggage-room, look- 
ing for a Cook's guide to inquire my way to the Con- 
tinental, when I was seized upon by one. 

"Are you Mr. Dreiser?" he said. 

I replied that I was. 

" Mrs. Barfleur told me to say that she was waiting for 
you and that you should come right over and inquire for 
her." 

I hurried away, followed by a laboring porter, and 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 317 

found her waiting for me in the hotel lobby, — not the 
large, severe person I had imagined, but a small, enthusi- 
astic, gracious little lady. She told me that my room was 
all ready and that the bath that I had demanded was 
connected with it, and that she had ordered some coffee 
sent up, but that I could have anything else that I chose. 
She began with a flood of questions — how was her poor 
dear son, and her daughter in London? And had we 
lost much money at Monte Carlo? And had we been 
very nice and quiet in Paris? And had I had a pleasant 
trip? And was it very cold in Paris? And would I 
like to go with her here and there for a few days, par- 
ticularly until I was acclimated and able to find my own 
way about? I answered her freely and rapidly, for I 
took a real liking to her and decided at once that I was 
going to have a very nice time — she was so motherly 
and friendly. It struck me as delightful that she should 
wait up for me, and see that I was welcomed and com- 
fortably housed ; I can see her now with a loving memory 
in her charming gray silk dress and black lace shawl. 

The first morning I arose in Rome it was raining; 
but to my joy, in an hour or two the sun came out and 
I saw a very peculiar city. Rome has about the climate 
of Monte Carlo, except that it is a little more changeable, 
and in the mornings and evenings quite chill. Around 
noon every day it was very warm — almost invariably 
bright, deliciously bright; but dark and cool where the 
buildings or the trees cast a shadow. I was awakened 
by huzzaing which I learned afterwards was for some 
officer who had lately returned from Morocco. 

Like the English, the Italians are not yet intimately 
acquainted with the bathroom, and this particular hotel 
reminded me of the one in Manchester with its bath 
chambers as large as ordinary living-rooms. My room 
looked out into an inner court, which was superimposed 



3i8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

upon the lobby of the hotel, and was set with palms and 
flowers which flourished mightily. I looked out through 
an opening in this court to some brown buildings over 
the way — brown as only the Italians know how to paint 
them, and bustling with Italian life. 

Mrs. Barfleur had kindly volunteered to show me about 
this first day, and I was to meet her promptly at ten in 
the lobby. She wanted me to take a street car to begin 
with, because there was one that went direct to St. Peter's 
along the Via Nazionale, and because there were so many 
things she could show me that way. We went out into 
the public square which adjoined the hotel and there 
it was that she pointed out the Museo delle Terme, lo- 
cated in the ancient baths of Diocletian, and assured me 
that the fragments of wall that I saw jutting out from 
between buildings in one or two places dated from 
the Roman Empire. The fragment of the wall of Ser- 
vius Tullius which we encountered In the Via Nazionale 
dates from 578 B. C, and the baths of Diocletian, so 
close to the hotel, from 303 A. D. The large ruin that 
I had seen the night before on entering the city was 
a temple to Minerva Medica, dating from about 250 
A. D. I shall never forget my sensation on seeing mod- 
ern stores — drug stores, tobacco stores, book stores, all 
with bright clean windows, adjoining these very an- 
cient ruins. It was something for the first time to see 
a fresh, well-dressed modern throng going about Its 
morning's business amid these rude suggestions of a very 
ancient life. 

Nearly all the traces of ancient Rome, however, were 
apparently obliterated, and you saw only busy, up-to-date 
thoroughfares, with street cars, shops, and a gay metro- 
politan life generally. I have to smile when I think 
that I mistook a section of the old wall of Servius Tul- 
lius for the remnants of a warehouse which had recently 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 319 

been removed. All the time in Rome I kept suffering 
this impression — that I was looking at something which 
had only recently been torn down, when as a matter of 
fact I w^as looking at the earlier or later walls of the 
ancient city or the remnants of famous temples and baths. 
This particular street car line on which we were riding 
was a revelation in its way, for it was full of black- 
frocked priests in shovel hats, monks in brown cowls and 
sandals, and Americans and English old maids in spec- 
tacles who carried their Baedekers with severe primness 
and who were, like ourselves, bound for the Vatican. 
The conductors, it struck me, were a trifle more civil than 
the American brand, but not much ; and the native pas- 
sengers were a better type of Italian than we usually see 
in America. I sighted the Italian policeman at different 
points along the way — not unlike the Parisian gendarme 
in his high cap and short cape. The most striking char- 
acteristic, however, was the great number of priests and 
soldiers who were much more numerous than policemen 
and taxi drivers in New York. It seemed to me that on 
this very first morning I saw bands of priests going to 
and fro in all directions, but, for the rest of it, Rome was 
not unlike Monte Carlo and Paris combined, only that 
its streets were comparatively narrow and its colors high. 
Mrs. Barfleur was most kindly and industrious in her 
explanations. She told me that in riding down this Via 
Nazionale we were passing between those ancient hills, 
the Quirinale and the Viminale, by the Forum of Trajan, 
the Gallery of Modern Art, the palaces of the Aldobran- 
dini and Rospigliosi, and a score of other things which 
I have forgotten. When we reached the open square 
which faces St. Peter's, I expected to be vastly impressed 
by my first glimpse of the first Roman Church of the 
world ; but in a way I was very much disappointed. To 
me it was not in the least beautiful, as Canterbury was 



320 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

beautiful, as Amiens was beautiful, and as Pisa was 
beautiful. I was not at all enthusiastic over the semi- 
circular arcade in front with its immense columns. I 
knew that I ought to think it was wonderful, but I could 
not. I think in a way that the location and arrangement 
of the building does not do it justice, and it has neither 
the somber gray of Amiens nor the delicate creamy hue 
of the buildings of Pisa. It is brownish and gray by 
turns. As I drove nearer I realized that it was very 
large — astonishingly large — and that by some hocus- 
pocus of perspective and arrangement this was not easily 
realizable. I was eager to see its interior, however, and 
waived all exterior consideration until later. 

As we were first going up the steps of St. Peter's and 
across the immense stone platform that leads to the 
door, a small Italian wedding-party arrived, without any 
design of being married there, however; merely to visit 
the various shrines and altars. The gentleman was 
somewhat self-conscious in a long black frock coat and 
high hat — a little, brown, mustached, dapper man whose 
patent leather shoes sparkled in the sun. The lady was 
a rosy Italian girl, very much belaced and besilked, with 
a pert, practical air; a little velvet-clad page carried her 
train. There were a number of friends — the parents 
on both sides, I took it — and some immediate relatives 
who fell solemnly in behind, two by two; and together 
this little ant-like band crossed the immense threshold. 
Mrs. Barfleur and I followed eagerly after — or at least 
I did, for I fancied they were to be married here and I 
wanted to see how it was to be done at St. Peter's. I was 
disappointed, however; for they merely went from altar 
to altar and shrine to shrine, genuflecting, and finally en- 
tered the sacred crypt, below which the bones of St. 
Peter are supposed to be buried. It was a fine religious 
beginning to what I trust has proved a happy union. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 321 

St. Peter's, if I may be permitted to continue a little 
on that curious theme, is certainly the most amazing 
church in the world. It is not beautiful — I am satisfied 
that no true artist would grant that; but after you have 
been all over Europe and have seen the various edifices of 
importance, it still sticks in your mind as astounding, 
perhaps the most astounding of all. While I was in 
Rome I learned by consulting guide-books, attending lec- 
tures and visiting the place myself, that it is nothing 
more than a hodge-podge of the vagaries and enthusi- 
asms of a long line of able pontiffs. To me the Catholic 
Church has such a long and messy history of intrigue 
and chicanery that I for one cannot contemplate its cen- 
tral religious pretensions with any peace of mind. I am 
not going into the history of the papacy, nor the in- 
ternecine and f-ratricidal struggles of medieval Italy; 
but what veriest tyro does not grasp the significance of 
what I mean? Julius II, flanking a Greek-cross basil- 
ica with a hexastyle portico to replace the Constantinian 
basilica, which itself had replaced the oratory of St. 
Anacletus on this spot, and that largely to make room 
for his famous tomb which was to be the finest thing 
in it ; Urban VIII melting down the copper roof of the 
Pantheon portico in order to erect the showy balda- 
chino ! I do not now recall what ancient temples were 
looted for marble nor what popes did the looting, but 
that it was plentifully done I am satisfied and Van Ranke 
will bear me out. It was Julius II and Leo X who re- 
sorted to the sale of indulgences, which aided in bring- 
ing about the Reformation, for the purpose of paying 
the enormous expenses connected with the building of 
this lavish structure. Think of how the plans of Bra- 
mante and Michelangelo and Raphael and Carlo Maderna 
were tossed about between the Latin cross and the Greek 
cross and between a portico of one form and a portico 



322 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

of another form! Wars, heartaches, struggles, conten- 
tions — these are they of which St. Peter's is a memorial. 
As I looked at the amazing length — six hundred and 
fifteen feet — and the height of the nave — one hundred 
and fifty-two feet — and the height of the dome from 
the pavement in the interior to the roof — four hun- 
dred and five feet — and saw that the church actually 
contained forty-six immense altars and read that it con- 
tained seven hundred and forty-eight columns of marble, 
stone or bronze, three hundred and eighty-six statues and 
two hundred and ninety windows, I began to realize how 
astounding the whole thing was. It was really so large, 
and so tangled historically, and so complicated in the 
history of its architectural development, that it was 
useless for me to attempt to synchronize its significance 
in my mind, I merely stared, staggered by the great 
beauty and value of the immense windows, the showy 
and astounding altars. I came back again and again ; but 
I got nothing save an unutterable impression of over- 
whelming grandeur. It is far too rich in its composi- 
tion for mortal conception. No one, I am satisfied, truly 
completely realizes how grand it is. It answers to 
that word exactly. Browning's poem, " The Bishop Or- 
ders His Tomb at St. Praxed's," gives a faint suggestion 
of what any least bit of it is like. Any single tomb of any 
single pope — ■ of which it seemed to me there were no end 
■ — ■ might have had this poem written about it. Each one 
appears to have desired a finer tomb than the other; 
and I can understand the eager enthusiasm of Sixtus V 
(1588), who kept eight hundred men working night and 
day on the dome in order to see how it was going to 
look. And well he might. Murray tells the story of 
how on one occasion, being in want of another receptacle 
for water, the masons tossed the body of Urban VI out 
of his sarcophagus, put aside his bones in a corner, and 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 323 

gave the ring on his finger to the architect. The pope's 
remains were out of their receptacle for fifteen years 
or more before they were finally restored. 

The Vatican sculptural and art museums were equally 
astonishing. I had always heard of its eleven hundred 
rooms and its priceless collections; but it v/as thrill- 
ing and delightful to see them face to face, all the long 
line of Greek and Roman and medieval perfections, chis- 
eled or painted, transported from ruins or dug from the 
earth — such wonders as the porphyry vase and Laocoon, 
taken from the silent underground rooms of Nero's 
house, where they had stood for centuries, unheeded, in 
all their perfection; and the river god, representative 
of the Tiber. I was especially interested to see the vast 
number of portrait busts of Roman personalities — 
known and unknown — which gave me a face-to- face 
understanding of that astounding people. They came 
back now or arose vital before me — Claudius, Nerva, 
Hadrian, Faustina the elder, wife of Antoninus Pius, 
Pertinax, whose birthplace was near Monte Carlo, Julius 
Csesar, Cicero, Antoninus Pius, Tiberius, Mark Antony, 
Aurelius Lepidus, and a score of others. It was amaz- 
ing to me to see how like the modern English and Ameri- 
cans they were, and how practical and present-day-like 
they appeared. It swept away the space of two thousand 
years as having no significance whatever, and left you 
face to face with the. far older problem of humanity. I 
could not help thinking that the duplicates of these men 
are on our streets to-day in New York and Chicago and 
London — urgent, calculating, thinking figures — and 
that they are doing to-day much as these forerunners did 
two thousand years before. I cannot see the slightest 
difference between an emperor like Hadrian and a banker 
like Morgan. And the head of a man like Lord Salis- 
bury is to be found duplicated in a score of sculptures 



324 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

in various museums throughout the Holy City. I re- 
alized, too, that any one of hundreds of these splendid 
marbles, if separated from their populous surroundings 
and given to a separate city, meager in artistic pos- 
sessions, would prove a great public attraction. To him 
that hath shall be given, however; and to those that 
have not shall be taken away even the little that they 
have. And so it is that Rome fairly suffocates with its 
endless variety of artistic perfection — one glory almost 
dimming the other — while the rest of the world yearns 
for a crust of artistic beauty and has nothing. It is 
like the Milky Way for jewels as contrasted with those 
vast starless spaces that give no evidence of sidereal 
life. 

I wandered in this region of wonders attended by my 
motherly friend until it was late in the afternoon, and 
then we went for • lunch. Being new to Rome, I was 
not satisfied with what I had seen, but struck forth again 
— coming next into the region of Santa Maria Maggiore 
and up an old stairway that had formed a part of a 
Medici palace now dismantled — only to find myself 
shortly thereafter and quite by accident in the vicinity 
of the Colosseum. I really had not known that I was 
coming to it, for I was not looking for it. I was fol- 
lowing idly the lines of an old wall that lay in the vi- 
cinity of San Pietro in Vincoli when suddenly it appeared, 
lying in a hollow at the foot of a hill — the Esquiline. 
I was rejoicing in having discovered an old well that 
I knew must be of very ancient date, and a group of 
cypresses that showed over an ancient wall, when I 
looked — and there it was. It was exactly as the pic- 
tures have represented it — oval, many-arched, a thor- 
oughly ponderous ruin. I really did not gain a sugges- 
tion of the astonishing size of it until I came down the 
hill, past tin cans that were lying on the grass — a sign 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ROME 325 

of the modernity that possesses Rome — and entered 
through one of the many arches. Then it came on me 
— the amazing thickness of the walls, the imposing size 
and weight of the fragments, the vast dignity of the 
uprising flights of seats, and the great space now prop- 
erly cleared, devoted to the arena. All that I ever knew 
or heard of it came back as I sat on the cool stones and 
looked about me while other tourists walked leisurely 
about, their Baedekers in their hands. It was a splen- 
did afternoon. The sun was shining down in here; and 
it was as warm as though it were May in Indiana. 
Small patches of grass and moss were detectable every- 
where, growing soft and green between the stones. The 
five thousand wild beasts slaughtered in the arena at its 
dedication, which remained as a thought from my high- 
school days, were all with me. I read up as much as I 
could, watching several workmen lowering themselves by 
ropes from the top of the walls, the while they picked out 
little tufts of grass and weeds beginning to flourish in the 
earthy niches. Its amazing transformations from being 
a quarry for greedy popes by whom most of its mag- 
nificent marbles were removed, to its narrow escape from 
becoming a woolen-mill operated by Sixtus V, were all 
brooded over here. It was impossible not to be im- 
pressed by the thought of the emperors sitting on their 
especial balcony; the thousands upon thousands of Ro- 
mans intent upon some gladiatorial feat ; the guards out- 
side the endless doors, the numbers of which can still 
be seen, giving entrance to separate sections and tiers 
of seats; and the vast array of civic life which must 
have surged about. I wondered whether there were 
venders who sold sweets or food and what their cries 
were in Latin. One could think of the endless procession 
that wound its way here on gala days. Time works mel- 
ancholy changes. 



326 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

I left as the sun was going down, tremendously im- 
pressed with the wonder of a life that is utterly gone. It 
was like finding the glistening shell of an extinct beetle 
or the suggestion In rocks of a prehistoric world. As I 
returned to my hotel along the thoroughly modern streets 
with their five- and six-story tenement and apartment 
buildings, their street cars and customaiy vehicles, their 
newspaper, flower and cigar stands, I tried to restore and 
keep in my mind a suggestion of the magnificence that 
Gibbon makes so significant. It was hard ; for be one's 
Imagination what it will, it Is difficult to live outside of 
one's own day and hour. The lights already beginning 
to flourish In the smart shops, distracted my mood. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY 

' "M" AM going to introduce you to such a nice woman," 
I Mrs. Barfleur told me the second morning I was 
-*^ in Rome, in her very enthusiastic way. " She is 
charming. I am sure you will like her. She comes from 
America somewhere — New York, I think. Her hus- 
band is an author, I believe. I heard so." She chat- 
tered on in her genial, talk-making way. " I don't un- 
derstand these American women ; they go traveling about 
Europe without their husbands in such a strange way. 
Now, you know in England we would not think of doing 
anything of that kind." 

Mrs. Barfleur was decidedly conservative in her views 
and English in manner and speech, but she had the saving 
proclivity of being intensely interested in life, and realized 
that all is not gold that glitters. She preferred to be 
among people who know and maintain good form, who 
are interested in maintaining the social virtues as they 
stand accepted and who, if they do not actually observe 
all of the laws and tenets of society, at least maintain a 
deceiving pretense. She had a little coterie of friends in 
the hotel, as I found, and friends outside, such as 
artists, newspaper correspondents and officials connected 
with the Italian court and the papal court. I never knew 
a more industrious social mentor in the shape of a woman, 
though among men her son outstripped her. She was 
apparently here, there and everywhere about the hotel, 
in the breakfast-room, in the dining-room, in the card- 
room, in the writing-room, greeting her friends, plan- 
ning games, planning engagements, planning sightseeing 



328 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

trips. She was pleasant, too; delightful; for she knew 
what to do and when to do it, and if she was not impelled 
by a large constructive motive of any kind, nevertheless 
she had a sincere and discriminating love of the beautiful 
which caused her to excuse much for the sake of art. I 
found her well-disposed, kindly, sympathetic and very 
anxious to make the best of this sometimes dull existence, 
not only for herself, but for every one else. I liked her 
very much. 

Mrs. Q. I found on introduction, to be a beautiful 
woman of perhaps thirty-three or four, with two of the 
healthiest, prettiest, best-behaved children I have ever 
seen. I found her to be an intellectual and brilliant 
woman with an overwhelming interest in the psychology 
of history and current human action. 

" I trust I see an unalienated American," I observed 
as Mrs. Barfieur brought her forward, encouraged by her 
brisk, quizzical smile. 

" You do, you do," she replied smartly, " as yet. 
Nothing has happened to my Americanism except Italy, 
and that 's only a second love." 

She had a hoarse little laugh which was nevertheless 
agreeable. I felt the impact of a strong, vital tempera- 
ment, self-willed, self-controlled, intensely eager and am- 
bitious. I soon discovered she was genuinely interested 
in history, which is one of my great failings and de- 
lights. She liked vital, unillusioned biography such as 
that of Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, Cellini's 
Diary, and the personal reminiscences of various court 
favorites in different lands. She was interested in some 
plays, but cared little for fiction, which I take to be com- 
mendable. Her great passion at the moment, she told 
me, was the tracing out in all its ramifications of the 
history and mental attitude of the Borgia family espe- 
cially Caesar and Lucrezia — which I look upon as a re- 



MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY 329 

markable passion for a woman. It takes a strong, 
healthy, clear-thinking temperament to enjoy the mental 
vagaries of the Borgias — father, son and daughter. 
She had conceived a sincere admiration for the courage, 
audacity, passion and directness of action of Caesar, to 
say nothing of the lymphatic pliability and lure of Lu- 
crczia, and the strange philosophic anarchism and despotic 
individualism of their father, Alexander VI. 

I wonder how much the average reader knows of the 
secret history of the Borgias. It is as modern as desire, 
as strange as the strangest vagaries of which the mind 
is capable. I am going to give here the outline of the 
Borgia family history as Mrs. Q. crisply related it to 
me, on almost the first evening we met, for I, like so many 
Americans, while knowing something of these curious 
details in times past had but the haziest recollection 
then. To be told it in Rome itself by a breezy American 
who used the vernacular and who simply could not sup- 
press her Yankee sense of humor, was as refreshing an 
experience as occurred in my whole trip. Let me say 
first that Mrs. Q. admired beyond words the Italian sub- 
tlety, craft, artistic insight, political and social wisdom, 
governing ability, and as much as anything their money- 
getting and money-keeping capacities. The raw prac- 
ticality of this Italian family thrilled her. 

You will remember that Rodrigo Lanzol, a Spaniard who 
afterwards assumed the name of Rodrigo Borgia, because his 
maternal uncle of that name was fortunate enough to succeed 
to the papacy as Calixtus III, and could do him many good turns 
afterwards, himself succeeded to the papacy by bribery and 
other outrages under the title of Alexander VI. That was 
August ro, 1442. Before that, however, as nephew to Calixtus 
III, he had been made bishop, cardinal, and vice-chancellor of 
the Church solely because he was a relative and favored by 
his uncle ; and all this before he was thirty-five. He had pro- 
ceeded to Rome, established himself with many mistresses at 



330 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

his call in a magnificent palace, and at the age of thirty-seven, 
his uncle Calixtus III having died, was reprimanded by Pius II, 
the new pope, for his riotous and adulterous life. By 1470, 
when he was forty-nine he took to himself, as his favorite, 
Vanozza dei Cattani, the former wife of three different husbands. 
By Vanozza, who was very charming, he had four children, all of 
whom he prized highly — Giovanni, afterwards Duke of Gandia, 
born 1474; Ceesar, 1476; Lucrezia, 1480; Geoffreddo or Giuffre, 
born 1481 or 1482, There were other children — Girolamo, Isa- 
bella and Pier Luigi, whose parentage on the mother's side is un- 
certain; and still another child, Laura, whom he acquired via 
Giulia Farnese, the daughter of the famous family of that name, 
who was his mistress after he tired, some years later, of 
Vanozza. Meanwhile his children had grown up or were 
fairly well-grown when he became pope, which opened the most 
astonishing chapter of the history of this strange family. 

Alexander was a curious compound of paternal affection, love 
of gold, love of women, vanity, and other things. He certainly 
was fond of his children or he would not have torn Italy with 
dissension in order to advantage them in their fortunes. His 
career is the most ruthless and weird of any that I know. 

He was no sooner pope (about April, 1493) than he proposed 
to carve out careers for his family — his favored children by his 
favorite mistress. In 1492, the same year he was made pope, 
he created Csesar, his sixteen-year-old son, studying at Pisa, a 
cardinal, showing the state of the papacy in those days. He 
proposed to marry his daughter Lucrezia well, and having the 
year before, when she was only eleven, betrothed her to one 
Don Cherubin de Centelles, a Spaniard, he broke this arrange- 
ment and had Lucrezia married by proxy to Don Gasparo de 
Procida, son of the Count of Aversa, a man of much more im- 
portance, who, he thought, could better advance her fortune. 

Italy, however, was in a very divided and disorganized state. 
There was a King of Naples, a Duke of Venice, a Duke of 
Milan, a separate state life at Pisa, Genoa, Florence and else- 
where. In order to build himself up and become very power- 
ful, and to give preferment to each of his sons, some of these 
states had to be conquered and controlled; and so the old gen- 
tleman, without conscience and without mercy except as suited 
his whim, was for playing politics, making war, exercising 
treachery, murdering, poisoning, persuading, bribing — any- 



MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY 331 

thing and everything to obtain his ends. He must have been 
well thought of as a man of his word, for when he had made a 
deal with Charles VIII of France to assist him in invading and 
conquering Naples, the king demanded and obtained Caesar, 
Alexander's son, aged twenty-one, as a hostage for faithful 
performance of agreement. He had not taken him very far, 
however, before the young devil escaped and returned to Rome, 
where subsequently his father, finding it beneficial to turn 
against the King of France, did so. 

But to continue. While his father was politicking and 
trafficking in this way for the benefit of himself and his dear 
family, young Caesar was beginning to develop a few thoughts 
and tendencies of his own. Alexander VI was planning to 
create fiefs or dukedoms out of the papal states and out of the 
Kingdom of Naples and give them to his eldest son, Giovanni, 
and his youngest, Giuffre. Caesar would have none of this. He 
saw himself as a young cardinal being left out in the cold. 
Besides, there was a cause of friction between him and his 
brother Giovanni over the affections of their youngest brother 
Giuffre's wife, Sancha. They were both sharing the latter 's 
favors, and so one day, in order to clear matters up and teach 
his father (whose favorite he was) where to bestow his benefits 
and so that he might have Sancha all to himself — he murdered 
his brother Giovanni. The latter's body, after a sudden and 
strange absence, was found in the Tiber, knife-marked, and all 
was local uproar until the young cardinal was suspected, when 
matters quieted down and nothing more was thought of it. 
There was also thought to be some rivalry between Caesar and 
Giovanni over the affections of their sister Lucrezia. 

After this magnificent evidence of ability, the way was clear 
for Caesar. He was at once (July, 1497) sent as papal legate 
to Naples to crown Frederick of Aragon ; and it was while there 
that he met Carlotta, the daughter of the king, and wanted to 
marry her. She would have none of him. " What, marry that 
priest, that bastard of a priest ! " she is alleged to have said ; and 
that settled the matter. This may have had something to do 
with Caesar's desire to get out of Holy Orders and return to 
civil life, for the next year (1498) he asked leave of the papal 
consistory not to be a cardinal any longer and was granted this 
privilege " for the good of his soul." He then undertook the 
pleasant task, as papal legate, of carrying to Louis XH of 



332 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

France the pope's bull annulling the marriage of Louis with 
Jeanne of France in order that he might marry Anne of 
Brittany. On this journey he met Charlotte d'Albret, sister of 
the King of Navarre, whom he married. He was given the 
duchy of Valentinois for his gracious service to Louis XII and, 
loaded with honors, returned to Rome in order to further his 
personal fortunes with his father's aid. 

In the meanwhile there were a number of small principalities 
in Romagna, a territory near Milan, which his father Alexander 
VI was viewing with a covetous eye. One of these was con- 
trolled by Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, whom Alexander, 
at a time when he wanted to pit the strength of Milan against 
the subtle machinations of the King of Naples — caused 
Lucrezia his daughter, then only thirteen years of age, to marry, 
her union with the Count of Aversa having by this time been 
severed. Alexander having won the friendship of the King of 
Naples, he decided to proceed against the princelings of 
Romagna and confiscated their property. Caesar was tolled off 
as general to accomplish this for himself, being provided men 
and means. Young Sforza, who had married Lucrezia, found 
himself in a treacherous position, — his own brother-in-law, with 
the assistance of his father-in-law, plotting against his life, — 
and fled with his wife, the fair Lucrezia, aged fifteen, to Pesaro, 
There he was fought by Caesar who, however, not having 
sufficient troops was checked for the time being and returned 
to Rome. A year or so later. Pope Alexander being in a 
gentler frame of mind — it was Christmas and he desired all 
his children about him — invited them all home, including 
Lucrezia and her husband. Then followed a series of magnifi- 
cent fetes and exhibitions in honor of all this at Rome, and the 
family, including the uncertain son-in-law, husband of Lucrezia, 
seemed to be fairly well united in bonds of peace. 

Unfortunately, however, a little later (1497) the pope's mood 
changed again. He was now, after some intermediate quarrels, 
once more friendly with the King of Naples and decided that 
Sforza was no longer a fit husband for Lucrezia. Then came 
the annulment of this marriage and the remarriage of 
Lucrezia to Alphonso of Aragon, Duke of Bisceglie, a relative 
and favorite of the King of Naples, aged eighteen and hand- 
some. But, alas ! no sooner is this fairly begun than new com- 
plications arise. The pope thinks he sees an opportunity to 






MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY 333 

destroy the power of Naples as a rival with the aid of the King 
of France, Louis XII. He lends assistance to the latter, who 
comes to invade Naples, and young Bisceglie, now fearing for 
his life at the hands of his treacherous father-in-law, deserts 
Rome and Lucrezia and flees, Louis XII proceeds against 
Naples. Spoleto falls and Lucrezia, Bisceglie's wife, as repre- 
sentative of the pope (aged eighteen) is sent to receive the 
homage of Spoleto ! 

But the plot merely thickens. There comes a nice point in 
here on which historians comment variously. Incest is the 
basis. It was one time assumed that Alexander, the father, 
during all these various shifts treated his daughter as his 
mistress. Her brother Caesar also bore the same relation to 
her. Father and son were rivals, then, for the affections and 
favors of the daughter-sister. To offset the affections of the 
son the father has the daughter lure her husband, Bisceglie, 
back to Rome. From all accounts he was very much in love 
with his wife who was beautiful but dangerous because of her 
charms and the manner in which she was coveted by others. 
In 1499, when he was twenty and Caesar twenty-three, he was 
lured back and the next year, because of Caesar's jealousy of his 
monopoly of his own wife (Caesar being perhaps denied his 
usual freedom) Bisceglie was stabbed while going up the steps 
of the papal palace by Caesar Borgia, his brother-in-law, and 
that in the presence of his father-in-law, Alexander VI, the 
pope of Rome. According to one account, on sight of Caesar, 
jumping out from behind a column, Alphonso sought refuge 
behind Alexander, the pope, who spread out his purple robe to 
protect him, through which Caesar drove his knife into the bosom 
of his brother-in-law. The dear old father and father-in-law 
was severely shocked. He was quite depressed, in fact. He 
shook his head dismally. The wound was not fatal, however. 
Bisceglie was removed to the house of a cardinal near-by, where 
he was attended by his wife, Lucrezia, and his sister-in-law, 
Sancha, wife of Giuffre, both of whom he apparently feared a 
little, for they were compelled first to partake of all food pre- 
sented in order to prove that it was not poisoned. In this 
house — in this sick-chamber doorway — suddenly and unex- 
pectedly one day there appears the figure of Caesar. The ensu- 
ing scene (Lucrezia and Sancha present) is not given. Bisceg- 
lie is stabbed in his bed and this time dies. Is the crime 



334 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

avenged ? Not at all. This is Papa Alexander's own dominion. 
This is a family afifair, and father is very fond of Csesar, so the 
matter is hushed up. 

Witness the interesting final chapters. Caesar goes off, 
October, 1500, to fight the princes in Romagna once more, among 
whom are Giovanni, and Sforza, one of Lucrezia's ex-husbands. 
July, 1 501, Alexander leaves the papal palace in Rome to fight 
the Colonna, one of the two powerful families of Rome, with the 
assistance of the other powerful family, the Orsini. In his 
absence Lucrezia, his beloved, is acting-pope! January first 
(or thereabouts), 1501, Lucrezia is betrothed to Alphonso, son 
and heir to Ercole d'Este, whose famous villa near Rome is still 
to be seen. Neither Alphonso nor his father was anxious for 
this union, but Papa Alexander, Pope of Rome, has set his heart 
on it. By bribes and threats he brings about a proxy marriage 
— Alphonso not being present — celebrated with great pomp at 
St. Peter's. January, 1502, Lucrezia arrives in the presence of 
her new husband who falls seriously in love with her. Her fate 
is now to settle down, and no further tragedies befall on account 
of her, except one. A certain Ercole Strozzi, an Italian noble, 
appears on the scene and falls violently in love with her. She 
is only twenty-three or four even now. Alphonso d'Este, her 
new husband, becomes violently jealous and murders Ercole. 
Result: further peace until her death in 151 1 in her thirty-ninth 
year, during which period she had four children by Alphonso — 
three boys and one girl. 

As for brother Csesar he was, unfortunately, leading a more 
checkered career. On December 21, 1502, when he was only 
twenty-six, as a general fighting the allied minor princes in 
Romagna, he caused to be strangled in his headquarters at 
Senigallia, Vitellozzo Viletti and Oliveralto da Fermo, two 
princelings who with others had conspired against him some 
time before at Perugia. Awed by his growing power, they had 
been so foolish as to endeavor to placate him by capturing 
Senigallia for him from their allies and presenting it to him and 
allowing themselves to be lured to his house by protestations 
of friendship. Result: strangulation. 

August 18, 1503, Father Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, charm- 
ing society figure, polished gentleman, lover of the chase, patron 
of the arts, for whom Raphael, Michelangelo and Brabante had 
worked, breathes his last. He and Caesar had fallen desperately 



MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY 335 

sick at the same time of a fever. When Caesar recovers suf- 
ficiently to attend to his affairs, things are already in a bad way. 
The cardinals are plotting to seat a pope unfriendly to the Bor- 
gias. The Spanish cardinals on whom he has relied do not prove 
friendly and he loses his control. The funds which Papa Borgia 
was wont to supply for his campaigns are no longer forthcom- 
ing. Pope Julius II succeeding to the throne, takes away from 
Caesar the territories assigned to him by his father " for the 
honor of recovering what our predecessors have wrongfully 
alienated." In May, 1504, having gone to Naples on a safe 
conduct for the Spanish governor of that city, he is arrested 
and sent to Spain, where he is thrown into prison. At the end 
of two years he manages to escape and flees to the court of his 
brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, who permits him to aid in 
besieging the castle of a refractory subject. Here, March 12, 
1507, while Lucrezia elsewhere is peacefully residing with her 
spouse, he is killed. 

I have given but a feeble outline of this charming 
Renaissance idyl. Mixed in with it are constant murders 
or poisonings of weahhy cardinals and the confiscation of 
their estates whenever cash for the prosecution of C?esar's 
wars or the protection of papal properties are needed. 
The uxorious and child-loving old pope was exceedingly 
nonchalant about these little matters of human life. 
When he died there was a fight over his coffin between 
priests of different factions and mercenaries belonging to 
Caesar Borgia. The coffin being too short, his body was 
jammed down in it, minus his miter, and finally upset. 
Think of so much ambition coming to such a shameful 
end! He achieved his desire, however. He wrote his 
name large, if not In fame, at least in Infamy. He lived 
in astonishing grandeur and splendor. By his pictur- 
esque Iniquities he really helped tO' bring about the Ref- 
ormation. He had a curious affection for his children 
and he died immensely rich — and, pope. The fair Lu- 
crezia stands out as a strange chemical magnet of disaster. 
To love her was fear, disappointment, or death. And It 



336 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

was she and her brother Caesar, who particularly inter- 
ested Mrs, Q., although the aged Alexander amused her. 

During her vigorous recital I forgot the corner drug 
store and modern street cars of Rome, enthralled by the 
glamour of the ancient city. It was a delight to find that 
we had an intellectual affinity in the study of the va- 
garies of this strange phantasmagoria called human life, 
in which to be dull is to be a bond-slave, and to be 
wise is to be a mad philosopher, knowing neither right 
from wrong nor black from white. 

Together Mrs. Q. and I visited the Borghese and 
Barberini Palaces, the Villa Doria, the Villa Umberto, 
the Villa d'Este and the Appian Way. We paid a return 
visit to the Colosseum and idled together in the gardens 
of the Pincian, the paths of the Gianicolo, the gardens 
of the Vatican and along the Tiber. It was a pleasure 
to step into some old court of a palace where the walls 
were encrusted with fragments of monuments, inscrip- 
tions, portions of sarcophagi and the like, found on the 
place or in excavating, and set into the walls to preserve 
them — and to listen to this clever, wholesome woman 
comment on the way the spirit of life builds shells and 
casts them off. She was not in the least morbid. The 
horror and cruelties of lust and ambition held no terrors 
for her. She liked life as a spectacle. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI 

THE first Sunday I was In Rome I began my local 
career with a visit to the church of Santa Maria 
Maggiore, that faces the Via Cavour not far 
from the Continental Hotel where I was stopping, and 
afterwards San Prassede close beside it. After Canter- 
bury, Amiens, Pisa and St. Peter's, I confess churches 
needed to be of great distinction to interest me much; but 
this church, not so divinely harmonious, exteriorly speak- 
ing, left me breathless with its incrustations of marbles, 
bronzes, carvings, and gold and silver inlay. There is 
a kind of beauty, or charm, or at least physical excita- 
tion, in contemplating sheer gorgeousness which I can- 
not withstand, even when my sense of proportion and 
my reason are offended, and this church had that. Many 
of the churches in Rome have just this and nothing 
more. At least, what else they may have I am blind 
to. It did not help me any to learn as I did from Mrs. 
Barfieur, that it was very old, dating from 352 A. D., 
and that the blessed Virgin herself had indicated just 
where this basilica in her honor was to be built by having 
a small, private fall of snow which covered or outlined 
the exact dimensions of which the church was to be. I 
was interested to learn that they had here five boards of 
the original manger at Bethlehem inclosed in an urn of 
silver and crystal which is exposed in the sacristy on 
Christmas Eve and placed over the high altar on Christ- 
mas Day, and that here were the tombs and chapels of 
Sixtus V and Paul V and Clement VIII of the Borghese 
family and, too, a chapel of the Sforza family. Never- 

Z2,7 



338 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

theless the hodge-podge of history, wealth, illusion and 
contention, to say nothing of religious and social dis- 
covery, which go to make up a church of this kind, is a 
little wearisome, not to say brain-achey, when contem- 
plated en masse. These churches! Unless you are 
especially interested in a pope or a saint or a miracle or a 
picture or a monument or an artist — they are nothing 
save intricate jewel-boxes; nothing more. 

For the first five or six days thereafter I w^ent about 
with a certain Signor Tanni who was delivering peri- 
patetic lectures at the principal places of interest in Rome. 
This is a curious development of the modern cit)^, for so 
numerous are the travelers and so great their interest in 
the history of Rome that they gladly pay the three to 
twelve lire each, which is charged by the various lec- 
turers for their discussions and near-by trips. There 
was a Nashville, Tennessee, chicken-and-egg merchant 
w^ho, with his wife, was staying at our hotel and who 
was making the matter of seeing Rome quite as much 
of a business as that of chickens and eggs in Tennes- 
see. He was a man of medium height, dark, pale, neat, 
and possessed of that innate courtesy, reserve, large- 
minded fairness and lively appreciation — within set 
convictions — which is so characteristic of the native, 
reasonably successful American. We are such innocent, 
pure-minded Greeks — most of us Americans. In the 
face of such tawdry vulgarity and vileness as comprises 
the underworld cafe life of Paris, or before such a spec- 
tacle of accentuated craft, lust, brutality, and greed as 
that presented by the Borgias, a man such as my chicken- 
merchant friend, or any other American of his type, of 
whom there are millions, would find himself utterly 
nonplused. It would be so much beyond his ken, or 
intention, that I question whether he would see or under- 



I 



THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI 339 

stand it at all If it were taking place before his very 
eyes. There is something so childlike and pure about 
the attitude of many strong, able Americans that I mar- 
vel sometimes that they do as well as they do. Perhaps 
the! very Innocence Is their salvation. I could not have 
told this chicken-merchant and his wife, for Instance, 
anything of the subtleties of the underworld of Paris 
and Monte Carlo as I encountered them; and If I had 
he would not have believed me, he would have recoiled 
from It all as a burned child would recoil from fire. He 
was as simple and Interesting and practical as a man 
could be, and yet so thoroughly efficient that at the age. 
of forty-five he had laid by a competence and was off 
on a three years' tour of the world. 

Mrs. Chicken Merchant was a large woman — very 
stout, very fair, very cautious of her thoughts and her 
conduct, thoroughly sympathetic and well-meaning. Be- 
fore leaving her native town, she told me, she had 
Inaugurated a small library, the funds for which she had 
helped collect. Occasionally she was buying engravings 
of famous historic buildings, such as the Colosseum and 
the Temple of Vesta, which would eventually grace the 
walls of the library. She and her husband felt that they 
were educating themselves; and that they would return 
better citizens, more useful to their country, for this ex- 
ploration of the ancient world. They had been going 
each day, morning and afternoon, to some lecture or an- 
cient ruin ; and after I came they would seek me out of an 
evening and tell me what they had seen. I took great 
satisfaction In this, because I really liked them for their 
naive point of view and their thoroughly kindly and 
whole-hearted Interest In life. It flattered me to think 
that I was so acceptable to them and that we should get 
along so well together. Frequently they Invited me to 



340 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

their table to dinner. On these occasions my friend 
would open a bottle of wine, concerning which he had 
learned something since he had come abroad. 

It was Mr. and Mrs. Chicken Merchant who gave me 
a full description of the different Roman lecturers, their 
respective merits, their prices, and what they had to show. 
They had already been to the Forum, the Palatine, the 
Colosseum and the House of Nero, St. Peter's, the Cas- 
tle of St. Angelo, the Appian Way, the Catacombs and 
the Villa Frascati. They were just going to the Villa 
d'Este and to Ostia, the old seaport at the mouth of the 
Tiber. They were at great pains to get me to join the 
companies of Signor Tanni who, they were convinced, 
was the best of them all. " He tells you something. He 
makes you see it just as it was. By George! when we 
were in the Colosseum you could just fairly see the 
lions marching out of those doors; and that House of 
Nero, as he tells about it, is one of the most wonderful 
things in the world." 

I decided to join Signor Tanni's classes at once, and 
persuaded Mrs. Barfleur and Mrs. Q. to accompany me at 
different times. I must say that in spite of the com- 
monplaceness of the idea my mornings and afternoons 
with Signor Tanni and his company of sightseers proved 
as delightful as anything else that befell me in Rome. 
He was a most interesting person, born and brought up, 
as I learned, at Tivoli near the Villa d'Este, where his fa- 
ther controlled a small inn and livery stable. He was 
very stocky, very dark, very ruddy, and very active. 
Whenever we came to the appointed rendezvous where 
his lecture was to begin, he invariably arrived, swinging 
his coat-tails, glancing smartly around with his big black 
eyes, rubbing and striking his hands in a friendly man- 
ner, and giving every evidence of taking a keen interest 
in his work. He was always polite and courteous with- 



I 



THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI 341 

out being officious, and never for a moment either dull 
or ponderous. He knew his subject thoroughly of 
course ; but what was much better, he had an eye for the 
dramatic and the spectacular. I shall never forget how 
in the center of the Forum Romanum he lifted the cap 
from the ancient manhole that opens into the Cloaca 
Maxima and allowed us to look in upon the walls of 
that great sewer that remains as it was built before the 
dawn of Roman history. Then he exclaimed dramatic- 
ally : *' The water that Caesar and the emperors took 
their baths in no doubt flowed through here just as the 
water of Roman bath-tubs does to-day ! " 

On the Palatine, when we were looking at the site 
of the Palace of Elagabalus, he told how that weird 
worthy had a certain well, paved at the bottom with 
beautiful mosaic, in order that he might leap down upon 
it and thus commit suicide, but how he afterwards 
changed his mind — which won a humorous smile from 
some of those present and from others a blank look of 
astonishment. In the House of Nero, in one of those 
dark underbill chambers, which was once out in the clear 
sunlight, but now, because of the lapse of time and the 
crumbling of other structures reared above it, is deep 
under ground, he told how once, according to an idle 
legend, Nero had invited some of his friends to dine 
and when they were well along in their feast, and some- 
what intoxicated, no doubt, it began to rain rose leaves 
from the ceiling. Nothing but delighted cries of ap- 
proval was heard for this artistic thought until the rose 
leaves became an inch thick on the floor and then two 
and three, and four and five inches thick, when the guests 
tried the doors. They were locked and sealed. Then 
the shower continued until the rose leaves were a foot 
deep, two feet deep, three feet deep, and the tables were 
covered. Later the guests had to climb on tables and 



342 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

chairs to save themselves from their rosy bath ; but when 
they had cHmbed this high they could climb no higher, 
for the walls were smooth and the room was thirty feet 
deep. By the time the leaves were ten feet deep the guests 
were completely covered; but the shower continued until 
the smothering weight of them ended all life. — An in- 
genious but improbable story. 

No one of Signor Tanni's wide-mouthed company 
seemed to question whether this was plausible or not; 
and one American standing next to me exclaimed, 
" Well, I '11 be switched ! " My doubting mind set to 
work to figure out how I could have overcome this diffi- 
culty if I had been in the room; and in my mind I had 
all the associated guests busy tramping down rose leaves 
in order to make the quantity required as large as pos- 
sible. My idea was that I could tire Nero out on this 
rose-leaf proposition. The picture of these noble Ro- 
mans feverishly trampling down the fall of rose leaves 
cheered me greatly. 

After my first excursion with Signor Tanni I decided 
to take his whole course; and followed dutifully along 
behind him, listening to his interesting and good- 
natured disquisitions, during many delightful mornings 
and afternoons in the Forum, on the Palatine, in the Cata- 
combs, on the Appian Way and in the Villas at Frascati 
and Tivoli! I shall never forget how clearly and suc- 
cinctly the crude early beginnings and characteristics of 
Christianity came home to me as I walked in the Cata- 
combs and saw the wretched little graves hidden away in 
order that they might not be desecrated, and the under- 
ground churches where converts might worship free from 
molestation and persecution. 

On the Palatine the fact that almost endless palaces 
were built one on top of the other, the old palace leveled 
by means of the sledge and the crowbar and the new one 



THE ART OF SIGNOR TANNI 343 

erected upon the smoothed-over space, is easily demon- 
strated. They find the remains of different ruins in 
different layers as they dig down, coming eventually to 
the early sanctuaries of the kings and the federated 
tribes. It is far more interesting to walk through these 
old ruins and underground chambers accompanied by 
some one who loves them, and who is interested in them, 
and who by fees to the state servitors has smoothed the 
way, so that the ancient forgotten chambers are properly 
lighted for you, than it is to go alone. And to have a 
friendly human voice expatiating on the probable ar- 
rangement of the ancient culinary department and how 
it was all furnished, is worth while. I know that the 
wonder and interest of the series of immense, dark rooms 
which were once the palace of Nero, and formerly were 
exposed to the light of day, before the dust and incrusta- 
tion of centuries had been heaped upon them, but which 
now underlie a hill covered by trees and grass, came 
upon me with great force because of these human ex- 
planations; and the room in which, in loneliness and 
darkness for centuries stood the magnificent group of 
Laocoon and the porphyry vase now in the Vatican, until 
some adventuring students happened to put a foot 
through a hole, thrilled me as though I had come upon 
them myself. Until one goes in this way day by day 
to the site of the Circus Maximus, the Baths of Caracalla, 
the ruins of Hadrian's Villa, the Castle of St. Angelo, 
the Forum, the Palatine and the Colosseum, one can 
have no true conception of that ancient world. When 
you realize, by standing on the ground and contemplating 
these ancient ruins and their present fragments, that the 
rumored immensity of them in their heyday and youth 
is really true, you undergo an ecstasy of wonder; or if 
you are of a morbid turn you indulge in sad speculations 
as to the drift of life. I cannot tell you how the mosaics 



344 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

from the palace of Germanicus on the Palatine affected 
me, or how strange I felt when the intricacies of the 
houses of Caligula and Tiberius were made clear. To 
walk through the narrow halls which they trod, to know 
truly that they ruled in terror and with the force of mur- 
der, that Caligula waylaid and assaulted and killed, for his 
personal entertainment, in these narrow alleys which 
were then the only streets, and where torches borne by 
hand furnished the only light, is something. A vision 
of the hugeness and audacity of Hadrian's villa which 
now stretches apparently, one would say, for miles, the 
vast majority of its rooms still unexcavated and contain- 
ing what treasures Heaven only knows, is one of the 
strangest of human experiences. I marveled at this vast 
series of rooms, envying the power, the subtlety and the 
genius which could command it. Truly it is unbelievable 
— one of those things which stagger the imagination. 
One can hardly conceive how even an emperor of Rome 
would build so beautifully and so vastly. Rome is so 
vast in its suggestion that it is really useless to apostro- 
phize. That vast empire that stretched from India to the 
Arctic was surely fittingly represented here ; and while we 
may rival the force and subtlety and genius and imagina- 
tion of these men in our day, we will not truly outstrip 
them. Mind was theirs — vast, ardent imagination ; and 
if they achieved crudely it was because the world was 
still young and the implements and materials of life 
were less understood. They were the great ones — the 
Romans. We must still learn from them. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN 

THE remainder of my days in Rome were only 
three or four. I had seen much of it that has 
been in no way indicated here. True to my 
promise I had looked up at his hotel my traveling ac- 
quaintance, the able and distinguished Mr. H., and had 
walked about some of the older sections of the city hear- 
ing him translate Greek and Latin inscriptions of ancient 
date with the ease with which I put my ordinary thought 
into English. Together we visited the Farnese Palace, the 
Mamertine Prison, the Temple of Vesta, Santa Maria 
in Cosmedin and other churches too numerous and too 
pointless to mention. It was interesting to me to note 
the facility of his learning and the depth of his 
philosophy. In spite of the fact that life, in the light 
of his truly immense knowledge of history and his ex- 
amination of human motives, seemed a hodge-podge of 
contrarieties and of ethical contradictions, nevertheless 
he believed that through all the false witness and pre- 
tense and subtlety of the ages, through the dominating 
and apparently guiding impulses of lust and appetite and 
vanity, seemingly untrammeled by mercy, tenderness or 
any human consideration, there still runs a construct- 
ive, amplifying, art-enlarging, life-developing tendency 
which is comforting, dignifying, and purifying, making 
for larger and happier days for each and all. It did not 
matter to him that the spectacle as we read it historically 
is always one of the strong dominating the weak, of 
the strong battling with the strong, of greed, hypocrisy 
and lying. Even so, the world was moving on — to what 

345 



346 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

he could not say, — we were coming into an ethical under- 
standing of things. The mass was becoming more in- 
telligent and better treated. Opportunity, of all sorts, 
was being more widely diffused, even if grudgingly so. 
We would never again have a Nero or a Caligula he 
thought — not on this planet. He called my attention 
to that very interesting agreement between leading fam- 
ilies of the Achaean League in lower Greece in which it 
was stipulated that the " ruling class should be honored 
like gods " and that the subject class should be " held in 
subservience like beasts." He wanted to know if even a 
suspicion of such an attitude to-day would not cause 
turmoil. I tried out his philosophy by denying it, but he 
was firm. Life was better to him, not merely different 
as some might take it to- be. 

I gave a dinner at my hotel one evening in order to pay 
my respects to those who had been so courteous to me and 
put it in charge of Mrs. Barfleur, who was desirous of 
nothing better. She was fond of managing. Mrs. Q. 
sat at my left and Mrs. H. at my right and we made a 
gay hour out of history, philosophy, Rome, current char- 
acter and travel. The literary executor of Oscar Wilde 
was present, Mr. Oscar Browning, and my Greek traveler 
and merchant, Mr. Bouris. An American publisher and 
his wife, then in Rome, had come, and we were as gay 
as philosophers and historians and antiquaries can be. 
Mr. H. drew a laugh by announcing that he never read a 
book under 1500 years of age any more, and the literary 
executor of Oscar Wilde told a story of the latter to the 
effect that the more he contemplated his own achieve- 
ments, the more he came to admire himself, and the less 
use he had for other people's writings. One of the 
most delightful stories I have heard in years was told 
by H. who stated that an Italian thief, being accused 
of stealing three rings from the hands of a statue of the 



AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN 347 

Virgin that was constantly working miracles, had de- 
clared that, as he was kneeling before her in solemn 
prayer, the Virgin had suddenly removed the rings from 
her finger and handed them to him. But the priests who 
were accusing him (servitors of the Church) and the 
judge who was trying him, all firm believers, would not 
accept this latest development of the miraculous tenden- 
cies of the image and he was sent to jail. Alas! that 
true wit should be so poorly rewarded. 

One of the last things I did in Rome was to see the 
Pope. When I came there. Lent was approaching, and 
I was told that at this time the matter was rather difficult. 
None of my friends seemed to have the necessary influ- 
ence, and I had about decided to give it up, when one 
day I met the English representative of several London 
dailies who told me that sometimes, under favorable con- 
ditions, he introduced his friends, but that recently he had 
overworked his privilege and could not be sure. On the 
Friday before leaving, however, I had a telephone mes- 
sage from his wife, saying that she was taking her 
cousin and would I come. I raced into my evening 
clothes though it was early morning and was off to her 
apartment in the Via Angelo Brunetti, from which we 
were to start. 

Presentation to the Pope is one of those dull formali- 
ties made interesting by the enthusiasm of the faithful 
and the curiosity of the influential who are frequently 
non-catholic, but magnetized by the amazing history of 
the Papacy and the scope and influence of the Church. 
All the while that I was in Rome I could not help feeling 
the power and scope of this organization — much as I 
condemn its intellectual stagnation and pharisaism. 
Personally I was raised in the Catholic Church, but out- 
grew it at an early age. My father died a rapt believer 
in it and I often smile when I think how impossible it 



348 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

would have been to force upon him the true history of 
the Papacy and the Cathohc hierarchy. His subjugation 
to priestly influence was truly a case of the blind leading 
the blind. To him the Pope was truly infallible. There 
could be no wrong in any Catholic priest, and so on and 
so forth. The lives of Alexander VI and Boniface VIII 
would have taught him nothing. 

In a way, blind adherence to principles is justifiable, 
for we have not as yet solved the riddle of the universe 
and one may well agree with St. Augustine that the vile- 
ness of the human agent does not invalidate the curative 
or corrective power of a great principle. An evil doctor 
cannot destroy the value of medicine; a corrupt lawyer 
or judge cannot invalidate pure law. Pure religion and 
undefiled continues, whether there are evil priests or no, 
and the rise and fall of the Roman Catholic hierarchy 
has nothing to do with what is true in the teachings of 
Christ. 

It was interesting to me as I walked about Rome to 
see the indications or suggestions of the wide-spread 
influence of the Catholic Church — priests from England, 
Ireland, Spain, Egypt and monks from Palestine, the 
Philippines, Arabia, and Africa. I was standing in the 
fair in the Campo dei Fiori, where every morning 
a vegetable-market is held and every Wednesday a fair 
where antiquities and curiosities of various lands are 
for sale, when an English priest, seeing my difficulties 
in connection with a piece of jewelry, offered to trans- 
late for me and a little later a French priest inquired in 
French whether I spoke his language. In the Colosseum 
I fell in with a German priest from Baldwinsville, Ken- 
tucky, who invited me to come and see a certain group of 
Catacombs on a morning when he intended to say mass 
there, which interested me but I was prevented by an- 
other engagement; and at the Continental there were 



AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN 349 

stopping two priests from Buenos Ayres ; and so it went. 
The car lines which led down the Via Nazionale to St. 
Peter's and the Vatican was always heavily patronized 
by priests, monks, and nuns; and I never went any- 
where that I did not encounter groups of student-priests 
coming to and from their studies. 

This morning that we drove to the papal palace at 
eleven was as usual bright and warm. My English cor- 
respondent and his wife, both extremely intelligent, had 
been telling of the steady changes in Rome, its rapid 
modernization, the influence of the then Jewish mayor 
in its civic improvement and the waning influence of 
the Catholics in the matter of local affairs. " All Rome 
is probably Catholic," he said, " or nearly so ; but it 
is n't the kind of Catholicism that cares for papal in- 
fluence in political affairs. Why, here not long ago, in 
a public speech the mayor charged that the papacy M'as 
the cause of Rome's being delayed at least a hundred 
years in its progress and there was lots of applause. 
The national parliament which meets here is full of 
Catholics but it is not interested in papal influence. It 's 
all the other way about. They seem to be willing to 
let the Pope have his say in spiritual matters but he can't 
leave the Vatican and priests can't mix in political af- 
fairs very much." 

I thought, what a change from the days of Gregory 
VII and even the popes of the eighteenth century! 

The rooms of the Vatican devoted to the Pope — 
at least those to which the public is admitted at times 
of audience seemed to me merely large and gaudy with- 
out being impressive. One of the greatest follies of 
architecture, it seems to me, is the persistent thought that 
mere size without great beauty of form has any charm 
whatever. The Houses of Parliament in England are 
large but they are also shapely. As much might be said 



350 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

for the Palais Royal in Paris though not for the Louvre 
and almost not for Versailles. The Vatican is another 
great splurge of nothing — mere size without a vestige of 
charm as to detail. 

All I remember of my visit was that arriving at the 
palace entrance we were permitted by papal guards to 
ascend immense flights of steps, that we went through 
one large red room after another where great chandeliers 
swung from the center and occasional decorations or 
over-elaborate objects of art appeared on tables or ped- 
estals. There were crowds of people in each room, all in 
evening dress, the ladies with black lace shawls over 
their heads, the men in conventional evening clothes. 
Over-elaborately uniformed guards stood about, and prel- 
ates of various degrees of influence moved to and fro. 
We took our station in a room adjoining the Pope's 
private chambers where we waited patiently while vari- 
ous personages of influence and importance were pri- 
vately presented. 

It was dreary business waiting. Loud talking was 
not to be thought of, and the whispering on all sides as 
the company increased was oppressive. There was a 
group of ladies from Venice who were obviously friends 
of the Holy Father's family. There were two brown 
monks, barefooted and with long gray beards, patriarchal 
types, who stationed themselves by one wall near the 
door. There were three nuns and a mother superior 
from somewhere who looked as if they were lost in 
prayer. This was a great occasion to them. Next to 
me was a very official person in a uniform of some kind 
who constantly adjusted his neck-band and smoothed his 
gloved hands. Some American ladies, quite severe and 
anti-papistical if I am not mistaken, looked as if they 
were determined not to believe anything they saw, and 
two Italian women of charming manners had in tow an 



AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN 351 

obstreperous small boy of say five or six years of age in 
lovely black velvet, who was determined to be as bad 
and noisy as he could. He beat his feet and asked ques- 
tions in a loud whisper and decided that he wished to 
change his place of abode every three seconds; all of 
which was accompanied by many " sh-sh-es " from his 
elders and whisperings in his ear, severe frowns from 
the American ladies and general indications of disap- 
proval, with here and there a sardonic smile of amuse- 
ment. 

Every now and then a thrill of expectation would 
go over the company. The Pope was coming! Papal 
guards and prelates would pass through the room with 
speedy movements and it looked as though we would 
shortly be in the presence of the vicar of Christ. I was 
told that it was necessary to rest on one knee at least, 
which I did, waiting patiently the wdiile I surveyed the 
curious company. The two brown monks were appropri- 
ately solemn, their heads bent. The sisters were praying. 
The Italian ladies were soothing their restive charge. 
I told my correspondent- friend of the suicide of a cer- 
tain journalist, whom he and his wife knew, on the day 
that I left New York — a very talented but adventurous 
man ; and he exclaimed : " My God ! don't tell that to 
my wife. She '11 feel it terribly." We waited still longer 
and finally in sheer weariness began jesting foolishly; 
I said that it must be. that the Pope and Merry del Val, 
the Pope's secretary, were inside playing jackstones with 
the papal jewels. This drew a convulsive laugh from my 
newspaper friend — I will call him W. — who began to 
choke behind his handkerchief. Mrs. W. whispered to 
me that if we did not behave we would be put out and I 
pictured myself and W. being unceremoniously hustled 
out by the forceful guards, which produced more laughter. 
The official beside me, who probably did not speak Eng- 



352 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

lish, frowned solemnly. This produced a Itdl, and we 
waited a little while longer in silence. Finally the sixth 
or seventh thrill of expectation produced the Holy Father, 
the guards and several prelates making a sort of aisle 
of honor before the door. All whispering ceased. There 
was a rustle of garments as each one settled into a final 
sanctimonious attitude. He came in, a very tired-look- 
ing old man in white wool cassock and white skull cap, a 
great necklace of white beads about his neck and red 
shoes on his feet. He was stout, close knit, with small 
shrewd eyes, a low forehead, a high crown, a small, 
shapely chin. He had soft, slightly wrinkled hands, the 
left one graced by the papal ring. As he came in he 
uttered something in Italian and then starting on the far 
side opposite the door he had entered came about to 
each one, proffering the hand which some merely kissed 
and some seized on and cried over, as if it were the solu- 
tion of a great woe or the realization of a too great 
happiness. The mother superior did this and one of the 
Italian ladies from Venice. The brown monks laid their 
foreheads on it and the official next to me touched it as 
though it were an object of great value. 

I was interested to see how the Supreme Pontiff — 
the Pontifex Maximus of all the monuments — viewed 
all this. He looked benignly but rather wearily down 
on each one, though occasionally he turned his head 
away, or, slightly interested, said something. To the 
woman whose tears fell on his hands he said nothing. 
With one of the women from Venice he exchanged a 
few words. Now and then he murmured something. 
I could not tell whether he was interested but very tired, 
or whether he was slightly bored. Beyond him lay room 
after room crowded with pilgrims in which this per- 
formance had to be repeated. Acquainted with my 
newspaper correspondent he gave no sign. At me he 



AN AUDIENCE AT THE VATICAN 353 

scarcely looked at all, realizing no doubt my critical un- 
worthiness. At the prim, severe American woman he 
looked quizzically. Then he stood in the center of the 
room and having uttered a long, soft prayer, which my 
friend W. informed me was very beautiful, departed. 
The crowd arose. We had to wait until all the other 
chambers were visited by him and until he returned 
guarded on all sides by his soldiers and disappeared. 
There was much conversation, approval, and smiling sat- 
isfaction. I saw him once more, passing quickly between 
two long lines of inquisitive, reverential people, his head 
up, his glance straight ahead and then he was gone. 

We made our way out and somehow I was very glad 
I had come. I had thought all along that it really did 
not make any difference whether I saw him or not and 
that I did not care, but after seeing the attitude of the 
pilgrims and his own peculiar mood I thought it worth 
while. Pontifex Maximus! The Vicar of Christ! 
What a long way from the Catacomb-worshiping Chris- 
tians who had no Pope at all, who gathered together " to 
sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a God " and who 
bound themselves by a sacramental oath to commit no 
thefts, nor robberies, nor adulteries, nor break their 
word, nor deny a deposit when called upon, and who for 
nearly three hundred years had neither priest nor altar, 
nor bishop nor Pope, but just the rumored gospels of 
Christ. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 

THE Italian hill-cities are such a strange novelty to 
the American of the Middle West — used only 
to the flat reaches of the prairie, and the city or 
town gathered primarily about the railway-station. One 
sees a whole series of them ranged along the eastern 
ridge of the Apennines as one travels northward from 
Rome. All the way up this valley I had been noting ex- 
amples on either hand but when I got off the train at 
Assisi I saw what appeared to be a great fortress on a dis- 
tant hill — the sheer walls of the church and monastery of 
St. Francis. It all came back to me, the fact that St. 
Francis had been born here of a well-to-do father, 
that he had led a gay life in his youth, had had his " vi- 
sion " — his change of heart — which caused him to em- 
brace poverty, the care of the poor and needy and to fol- 
low precisely that idealistic dictum which says : " Lay 
not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, . . , but lay 
up for yourselves treasures in heaven, . . . for where 
your treasure is there will your heart be also." I had 
found in one of the little books I had with me, 
" Umbrian Towns," a copy of the prayer that he devised 
for his Order which reads : 

Poverty was in the crib and like a faithful squire she kept 
herself armed in the great combat Thou didst wage for our re- 
demption. During Thy passion she alone did not forsake Thee. 
Mary, Thy Mother, stopped at the foot of the cross, but poverty 
mounted it with Thee and clasped Thee in her embrace unto 
the end; and when Thou wast dying of thirst as a watchful 
spouse she prepared for Thee the gall. Thou didst expire in 
the ardor of her embraces, nor did she leave Thee when dead, 

354 



THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 355 

O Lord Jesus, for she allowed not Thy body to rest elsewhere 
than in a borrowed grave. O poorest Jesus, the grace I beg 
of Thee is to bestow on me the treasure of the highest poverty. 
Grant that the distinctive mark of our Order may be never to 
possess anything as its own under the sun for the glory of Thy 
name and to have no other patrimony than begging. 

I wonder if there is any one who can read this without 
a thrill of response. This world sets such store by wealth 
and comfort. We all batten on luxury so far as our 
means will permit, — many of us wallow in it; and the 
thought of a man who could write such a prayer as that, 
and live it, made my hair tingle to the roots. I can un- 
derstand Pope Innocent Ill's saying that the rule offered 
by St. Francis and his disciples to ordinary mortals was 
too severe, but I can also conceive the poetic enthusiasm 
of a St. Francis. I found myself on the instant in the 
deepest accord with him, understanding how it was that 
he wanted his followers not to wear a habit, and to work 
in the fields as day-laborers, begging only when they could 
not earn their way. The fact that he and his disciples 
had lived in reed huts on the site of Santa Maria degli 
Angeli, the great church which stands in the valley near 
the station, far down from the town, and had practised 
the utmost austerity, came upon me as a bit of imag- 
inative poetry of the highest sort. Before the rumbling 
bus arrived, which conveyed me and several others to the 
little hotel, I was thrilling with enthusiasm for this re- 
ligious fact, and anything that concerned him interested 
me. 

In some ways Assisi was a disappointment because I 
expected something more than bare picturesqueness ; it is 
very old and I fancy, as modern Italy goes, very poor. 
The walls of the houses are for the most part built of dull 
gray stone. The streets climbed up hill and down dale, 
hard, winding, narrow, stony affairs, lined right to the 



356 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

roadway by these bare, inhospitable-looking houses. No 
yards, no gardens — at least none visible from the streets, 
but, between walls, and down street stairways, and be- 
tween odd angles of buildings the loveliest vistas of the 
valley below, where were spread great orchards of olive 
trees, occasional small groups of houses, distant churches 
and the mountains on the other side of the valley. Quite 
suited to the self-abnegating spirit of St. Francis, I 
thought, — and I wondered if the town had changed 
greatly since his day — 1 182 ! 

As I came up in the bus, looking after my very un-St. 
Francis-like luggage, and my precious fur overcoat, I en- 
countered a pale, ascetic-looking French priest, — " L'Abbe 
Guillmant, Vicar General, Arras (Pas-de-Calais), 
France ; " he wrote out his address for me, — who, look- 
ing at me over his French Baedeker every now and then, 
finally asked in his own tongue, " Do you speak French ? " 
I shook my head deprecatingly and smiled regretfully. 
"ItaHano?" Again I had to shake my head. " C'est 
triste ! " he said, and went on reading. He was clad in a 
black cassock that reached to his feet, the buttons rang- 
ing nicely down his chest, and carried only a small port- 
manteau and an umbrella. We reached the hotel and I 
found that he was stopping there. Once on the way up 
he waved his hand out of the window and said some- 
thing. I think he was indicating that we could see Pe- 
rugia further up the valley. In the dining-room where 
I found him after being assigned to my room he offered 
me his bill-of-fare and indicated that a certain Italian 
dish was the best. 

This hotel to which we had come was a bare little af- 
fair. It was new enough — one of Cook's offerings, — • 
to which all the tourists traveling under the direction of 
that agency are sent. The walls were quite white and 
clean. The ceilings of the rooms were high, over high 






THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 357 

latticed windows and doors. My room, I found, gave 
upon a balcony which commanded the wonderful sweep 
of plain below. 

The dining-room contained six or seven other travelers 
bound either southward towards Rome or northward to- 
wards Perugia and Florence. It was a rather hazy day, 
not cold and not warm, but cheerless. I can still hear 
the clink of the knives and forks as the few guests ate in 
silence or conversed in low tones. Travelers in this world 
seem almost innately fearsome of each other, particularly 
when they are few in number and meet in some such out- 
of-the-way place as this. My Catholic Abbe was long- 
ing to be sociable with me, I could feel it; but this lack 
of a common tongue prevented him, or seemed to. As I 
was leaving I asked the proprietor to say to him that I 
was sorry that I did not speak French, that if I did I 
would be glad to accompany him; and he immediately 
reported that the Abbe said. Would I not come along, 
anyhow? "He haav ask," said the proprietor, a small, 
stout, dark man, " weel you not come halong hanyhow ? " 

"' Certainly," I replied. And so the Abbe Guillmant 
and I, apparently not understanding a word of each 
other's language, started out sightseeing together — I 
had almost said arm-in-arm. 

I soon learned that while my French priest did not 
speak English, he read it after a fashion, and if he took 
plenty of time he could form an occasional sentence. It 
took time, however. He began, — in no vivid or enthusi- 
astic fashion, to be sure, — to indicate what the different 
things were as we went along. 

Now the sights of Assisi are not many. If you are in 
a hurry and do not fall in love with the cjuaint and pic- 
turesque character of it and its wonderful views you can 
do them all in a day, — an afternoon if you skimp. There 
is the church of St. Francis with its associated monas- 



358 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

tery (what an anachronism a monastery seems in connec- 
tion with St. Francis, who thought only of huts of 
branches, or holes in the rocks!) with its sepulcher of the 
saint in the lower church, and the frescoed scenes from 
St. Francis's life by Giotto in the upper; the church of 
St. Clare (Santa Chiara) with its tomb and the body of 
that enthusiastic imitator of St. Francis; the Duomo, or 
cathedral, begun in 1134 — a rather poor specimen of a 
cathedral after some others — and the church of St. 
Damiano, which was given — the chapel of it — to St. 
Francis by the Benedictine monks of Alonte Subasio soon 
after he had begun his work of preaching the penitential 
life. There is also the hermitage of the Carceri, where, 
in small holes in the rocks the early Franciscans led a self- 
depriving life, and the new church raised on the site of 
the house belonging to Pietro Bernardone, the father of 
St. Francis, who was in the cloth business. 

I cannot say that I followed with any too much en- 
thusiasm the involved architectural, historical, artistic, 
and religious details of these churches and chapels. St. 
Francis, wonderful " jongleur of God " that he was, was 
not interested in churches and chapels so much as he was 
in the self-immolating life of Christ. He did not want 
his followers to have monasteries in the first place. 
" Carry neither gold nor silver nor money in your girdles, 
nor bag, nor two coats, nor sandals, nor staff, for the 
workman is worthy of his hire." I liked the church of 
St. Francis, how^ever, for in spite of the fact that it is 
gray and bare as befits a Franciscan edifice, it is a double 
church — one below the other, and seemingly running 
at right angles ; and they are both large Gothic churches, 
each complete with sacristy, choir nave, transepts and the 
like. The cloister is lovely, in the best Italian manner, 
and through the interstices of the walls wonderful views 
of the valley below may be secured. The lower church, 






THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 359 

gray and varied in its interior, is rich in frescoes by 
Cimabue and others deahng with the sacred vows of the 
Franciscans, the upper (the nave) decorated with fres- 
coes by Giotto, illustrating the life of St. Francis. The 
latter interested me immensely because I knew by now 
that these were almost the beginning of Italian and Um- 
brian religious art and because Giotto, from the evidences 
his work affords, must have been such a naive and pleas- 
ant old soul. I fairly laughed aloud as I stalked about 
this great nave of the upper church — the Abbe was still 
below — at some of the good old ItaHan's attempts at 
characterization and composition. It is no easy thing, if 
you are the founder of a whole line of great artists, 
called upon to teach them something entirely new in the 
way of life-expression, to get all the wonderful things 
you see and feel into a certain picture or series of pictures, 
but Giotto tried it and he succeeded very well, too. The 
decorations are not great, but they are quaint and lovely, 
even if you have to admit at times that an apprentice of 
to-day could draw and compose better. He could n't " in- 
tend " better, however, nor convey more human tender- 
ness and feeling in gay, light coloring, — and therein lies 
the whole secret! 

There are some twenty-eight of these frescoes ranged 
along the lower walls on either side — St. Francis step- 
ping on the cloak of the poor man who, recognizing him 
as a saint, spread it down before him; St. Francis giving 
his cloak to the poor nobleman; St. Francis seeing the 
vision of the palace which was to be reared for him and 
his followers; St. Francis in the car of fire; St. Francis 
driving the devils away from Arezzo; St. Francis before 
the Sultan ; St. Francis preaching to the birds ; and so on. 
It was very charming. I could not help thinking what a 
severe blow has been given to religious legend since those 
days however; nowadays, except in the minds of the ig- 



360 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

no rant, saints and devils and angels and stigmata and holy 
visions have all but disappeared. The grand phantasma- 
goria of religious notions as they relate to the life of 
Christ have all but vanished, for the time being anyhow, 
even in the brains of the masses, and we are having an 
invasion of rationalism or something approximating it, 
even at the bottom. The laissez-faire opportunism which 
has characterized the men at the top in all ages is seeping 
down to the bottom. Via the newspaper and the maga- 
zine, even in Italy — in Assisi — something of astronomy, 
botany, politics and mechanics, scientifically demonstrated, 
is creeping in. The inflow seems very meager as yet, a 
mere trickle, but it has begun. Even in Assisi I saw 
newspapers and a weekly in a local barber-shop. The 
natives — the aged ones — very thin, shabby and pale, 
run into the churches at all hours of the day to prostrate 
themselves before helpless saints; but nevertheless the 
newspapers are in the barber-shops. Old Cosimo Me- 
dici's truism that governments are not managed by pater- 
nosters is slowly seeping down. We have scores of men 
in the world to-day as able as old CosimO' Medici and as 
ruthless. We will have hundreds and thousands after 
a while, only they will be much more circumspect in their 
ruthlessness and they will work hard for the State. Per- 
haps there won't be so much useless praying before use- 
less images when that time comes. The thought of di- 
vinity in the individual needs to be more fully developed. 
While I was wandering thus and ruminating I was in- 
terested at the same time in the faithful enthusiasm my 
Abbe was manifesting in the details of the art of this 
great church. He followed me about for a time in my 
idle wanderings as I studied the architectural details of 
this one of the earliest of Gothic churches and then he 
went away by himself, returning every so often to find 
in my guide-book certain passages which he wanted me to 



THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 361 

read, pointing to certain frescoes and exclaiming, " Gi- 
otto ! " " Cimabue ! " " Andrea da Bologna ! " Finally he 
said in plain English, but very slowly : " Did — you — 
ever — read • — a — life — of St. Francis ? " 

I must confess that my knowledge of the intricacies of 
Italian art, aside from the lines of its general develop- 
ment, is slim. Alas, dabbling in Italian art, and in art 
in general, is like trifling with some soothing drug — the 
more you know the more you want to know. 

We continued our way and finally we found a Fran- 
ciscan monk who spoke both English and French — a pe- 
culiar-looking man, tall, and athletic, who appeared to be 
very widely experienced in the world, indeed. He ex- 
plained more of the frescoes, the history of the church, 
the present state of the Franciscans here, and so on. 

The other places Franciscan, as I have said, did not 
interest me so much, though I accompanied my friend, 
the Abbe, wherever he was impelled to go. He inquired 
about New York, looking up and waving his hand upward 
as indicating great height, great buildings, and I knew he 
was thinking of our skyscrapers. "American bar!" he 
said, twittering to himself like a bird, " American stim- 
eat [steam heat] ; American 'otel." 

I had to smile. 

Side by side we proceeded through the church of St. 
Clare, the Duomo, the new church raised on the site of 
the house that belonged to Pietro Bernardone, the father 
of the saint; and finally to the Church of San Damiano, 
where after St. Francis had seen the vision of the new 
life, he went to pray. After it was given him by the 
Benedictines he set about the work of repairing it and 
when once it was in charge of the poor Clares, after re- 
signing the command of his order, he returned thither to 
rest and compose the " Canticle of the Law." I never 
knew until I came to Assisi what a business this thing of 



362 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

religion is in Italy — how valuable the shrines and 
churches of an earlier day are to its communities. Thou- 
sands of travelers must pass this way each year. They 
support the only good hotels. Travelers from all nations 
come, English, French, German, American, Russian, and 
Japanese. The attendants at the shrines reap a small live- 
lihood from the tips of visitors and they are always there, 
lively and almost obstreperous in their attentions. The 
oldest and most faded of all the guides and attendants 
throng about the churches and shrines of Assisi, so old 
and faded that they seemed almost epics of poverty. My 
good priest was for praying before every shrine. He 
would get down on his knees and cross himself, praying 
four or five minutes while I stood irreligiously in the 
background, looking at him and wondering how long he 
would be. He prayed before the tomb of St. Francis 
in the Franciscan church; before the body of St. Clare 
(clothed in a black habit and shown behind a glass case), 
in the church of St. Clare; before the altar in the chapel 
of Saint Damiano, where St. Francis had first prayed ; and 
so on. Finally when we were all through, and it was get- 
ting late evening, he wanted to go down into the valley, 
near the railroad station, to the church of Santa Maria 
degli Angeli, where the cell in which St. Francis died, is 
located. He thought I might want to leave him now, but 
I refused. We started out, inquiring our way of the 
monks at Saint Damiano and found that we had to go 
back through the town. One of the monks, a fat, bare- 
footed man, signaled me to put on my hat, which I was 
carrying because I wanted to enjoy the freshness of the 
evening wind. It had cleared off now, the sun had come 
out and we were enjoying one of those lovely Italian 
spring evenings which bring a sense of childhood to the 
heart. The good monk thought I was holding my hat 
out of reverence to his calling. I put it on. 



THE CITY OF ST. FRANCIS 363 

We went back through the town and then I reahzed 
how lovely the life of a small Italian town is, in 
spring. Assisi has about five thousand population. It 
was cool and pleasant. Many doorways were now open, 
showing evening fires within the shadows of the rooms. 
Some children were in the roadways. Carts and wains 
were already clattering up from the fields below and 
church-bells — the sweetest echoes from churches here 
and there in the valley and from those here in Assisi — 
exchanged melodies. We walked fast because it was late 
and when we reached the station it was already dusk. 
The moon had risen, however, and Hghted up this great 
edifice, standing among a ruck of tiny homes. A number 
of Italian men and women were grouped around a pump 
outside — those same dark, ear-ringed Italians with whom 
we are now so familiar in America. The church was 
locked, but my Abbe went about to the cloister gate which 
stood at one side of the main entrance, and rang a bell. 
A brown-cowled monk appeared and they exchanged a 
few words. Finally with many smiles we were admitted 
into a moonlit garden, where cypress trees and box and 
ilex showed their lovely forms, and through a long court 
that had an odor of malt, as if beer were brewed here, and 
so finally by a circuitous route into the main body of the 
church and the chapel containing the cell of St. Francis. 
It was so dark by now that only the heaviest objects ap- 
peared distinctly, the moonlight falling faintly through 
several of the windows. The voices of the monks 
sounded strange and sonorous, even though they talked 
in low tones. We walked about looking at the great al- 
tars, the windows, and the high, flat ceiling. We went 
into the chapel, lined on either side by wooden benches, oc- 
cupied by kneeling monks, and lighted by one low, swing- 
ing lamp which hung before the cell in which St. Fran- 
cis died. There was much whispering of prayers here 



364 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and the good Abbe was on his knees in a moment pray- 
ing solemnly. 

St. Francis certainly never contemplated that his beg- 
garly cell would ever be surrounded by the rich marbles 
and bronze work against which his life was a protest. He 
never imagined, I am sure, that in spite of his prayer for 
poverty, his Order would become rich and influential and 
that this, the site of his abstinence, would be occupied by 
one of the most ornate churches in Italy. It is curious 
how barnacle-wise the spirit of materiality invariably en- 
crusts the ideal! Christ died on the cross for the privi- 
lege of worshiping God " in spirit and in truth " after he 
had preached the sermon on the mount, — and then you 
have the gold-incrusted, power-seeking, wealth-loving 
Papacy, with women and villas and wars of aggrandize- 
ment and bastardy among the principal concomitants. 
And following Francis, imitating the self-immolation of 
the Nazarene, you have another great Order whose 
churches and convents in Italy are among the richest and 
most beautiful. And everywhere you find that lust for 
iriches and show and gormandizing and a love of seeming 
what they are not, so that they may satisfy a faint 
scratching of the spirit which is so thickly coated over 
that it is almost extinguished. 

Or it may be that the ideal is always such an excellent 
device wherewith to trap the unwary and the unsophisti- 
cated. " Feed them with a fine-seeming and then put a 
tax on their humble credulity " seems to be the logic of 
materialism in regard to the mass. Anything to obtain 
power and authority ! Anything to rule ! And so you 
have an Alexander VI, Vicar of Christ, poisoning cardi- 
nals and seizing on estates that did not belong to him: 
leading a life of almost insane luxury; and a Medicean 
pope interested in worldly fine art and the development of 
a pagan ideal. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

PERUGIA 

WE returned at between seven and eight that 
night. After a bath I sat out on the large 
balcony, or veranda, commanding the valley, 
and enjoyed the moonlight. The burnished surface of 
the olive trees, and brown fields already being plowed with 
white oxen and wooden shares, gave back a soft glow that 
was somehow like the patina on bronze. There was a 
faint odor of flowers in the wind and here and there lights 
gleaming. From some street in the town I heard singing 
and the sound of a mandolin. I slept soundly. 

At breakfast, — coffee, honey, rolls and butter, — my 
Abbe gave me his card. He was going to Florence. He 
asked the hotel man to say to me that he had had a 
charming time and would I not come to France and visit 
him? " When I learn to speak French," I replied, 
smiling at him. He smiled and nodded. We shook 
hands and parted. 

After breakfast I called a little open carriage such as 
they use in Paris and Monte Carlo and was off for Spello ; 
and he took an early omnibus and caught his train. 

On this trip which Barfleur had recommended as offer- 
ing a splendid view of cypresses I was not disappointed : 
about some villa there was an imposing architectural ar- 
rangement of them and an old Roman amphitheater 
nearby — the ruins of it — bespoke the prosperous Roman 
life which had long since disappeared. Spello, like Assisi, 
and beyond it Perugia, (all these towns in this central 
valley in fact) was set on top of a high ridge, and on some 
peak of it at that. As seen from the valley below it was 

365 



366 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

most impressive. Close at hand, in its narrow winding 
streets it was simply strange, outre, almost bizarre, and 
yet a lovely little place after its kind. Like Assisi it was 
very poor — only more so. A little shrine to some old 
Greek divinity was preserved here and at the very top 
of all, on the extreme upper round of the hill was a 
Franciscan monastery which I invaded without a by your 
leave and walked in its idyllic garden. There and then 
I decided that if ever fortune should permit I would surely 
return to Spello and write a book, and that this garden 
and monastery should be my home. It was so eerie 
here — so sweet. The atmosphere was so wine-like. I 
wandered about under green trees and beside well-kept 
flower beds enjoying the spectacle until suddenly peering 
over a wall I beheld a small garden on a slightly lower 
terrace and a brown-cowled monk gathering vegetables. 
He had a basket on his arm, his hood back over his 
shoulders — a busy and silent anchorite. After a time 
as I gazed he looked and smiled, apparently not startled 
by my presence and then went on with his work. " When 
I come again," I said, " I shall surely live here and I '11 
get him to cook for me." Lovely thought! I leaned 
over other walls and saw in the narrow, windingf streets 
below natives bringing home bundles of fagots on the 
backs of long-eared donkeys, and women carrying water. 
Very soon, I suppose, a car line will be built and the 
uniformed Italian conductors will call " Assisi ! " 
"Perugia!" and even "The Tomb of St. Francis!" 

Of all the hill-cities I saw in Italy certainly Perugia 
was the most remarkable, the most sparkling, the most 
forward in all things commercial. It stands high, very 
high, above the plain as you come in at the depot and a 
wide-windowed trolley-car carries you up to the principal 
square, the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, stopping in front 



PERUGIA 367 

of the modern hotels which command the wide sea-Hke 
views which the valley presents below. Never was a city 
so beautifully located. Wonderful ridges of mountains 
fade into amazing lavenders, purples, scarlets, and blues, 
as the evening falls or the dawn brightens. If I were try- 
ing to explain where some of the painters of the Umbrian 
school, particularly Perugino, secured their wonderful 
sky touches, their dawn and evening effects, I should say 
that they had once lived at Perugia. Perugino did. It 
seemed to me as I wandered about it the two days that I 
was there that it was the most human and industrious lit- 
tle city I had ever walked into. Every living being 
seemed to have so much to do. You could hear, as you 
went up and down the streets — streets that ascend and 
descend in long, winding stairways, step by step, for blocks 
— pianos playing, anvils ringing, machinery humming, 
saws droning, and, near the great abattoir where cattle 
were evidently slaughtered all day long, the piercing 
squeals of pigs in their death throes. There was a busy 
market-place crowded from dawn until noon with the 
good citizens of Perugia buying everything from cabbages 
and dress-goods to picture post-cards and hardware. 
Long rows of fat Perugian old ladies, sitting with bas- 
kets of wares in front of them, all gossiped genially as 
they awaited purchasers. In the public square facing the 
great hotels, nightly between seven and ten, the whole 
spirited city seemed to be walking, a whole world of gay, 
enthusiastic life that would remind you of an American 
manufacturing town on a Saturday night — only this 
happens every night in Perugia. 

When I arrived there I went directly to my hotel, which 
faces the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. It was excellent, 
charmingly built, beautifully located, with a wide view of 
the Umbrian plain which is so wonderful in its array of 
distant mountains and so rich in orchards, monasteries, 



368 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

convents and churches. I think I never saw a place with 
so much variety of scenery, such curious twists of streets 
and lanes, such heights and depths of levels and plat- 
forms on which houses, the five- and six-story tenement of 
the older order of life in Italy, are built. The streets are 
all narrow, in some places not more than ten or fifteen 
feet wide, arched completely over for considerable dis- 
tances, and twisting and turning, ascending or descending 
as they go, but they give into such adorable squares and 
open places, such magnificent views at every turn! 

I do not know whether what I am going to say will 
have the force and significance that I wish to convey, but 
a city like Perugia, taken as a whole, all its gates, all its 
towers, all its upward-sweeping details, is like a cathedral 
in itself, a Gothic cathedral. You would have to think 
of the ridge on which it stands as providing the nave and 
the transepts and the apse and then the quaint little wind- 
ing streets of the town itself with their climbing houses 
and towers would suggest the pinnacles, spandrels, flying 
buttresses, airy statues and crosses of a cathedral like 
Amiens. I know of no other simile that quite suggests 
Perugia, — that is really so true to it. 

No one save an historical zealot could extract much 
pleasure from the complicated political and religious his- 
tory of this city. However once upon a time there was a 
guild of money-changers and bankers which built a hall, 
called the Hall of the Cambio, which is very charming; 
and at another time (or nearly the same time) there was a 
dominant Guelph party which, in conjunction with some 
wealthy townsmen known as the " Raspanti," built what 
is now known as the Palazzo Publico or Palazzo Com- 
munale, in what is now known as the Piazza del Muni- 
cipio, which I think is perfect. It is not a fortress like 
the Bargello or the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, but it is 



PERUGIA 369 

a perfect architectural thing, the charm of which remains 
with me fresh and keen. It is a beautiful structure — 
one that serves charmingly the uses to which it is put — 
that of a public center for officials and a picture-gallery. 
It was in one of these rooms, devoted to a collection of 
Umbrian art, that I found a pretentious collection of the 
work of Perugino, the one really important painter who 
ever lived or worked in Perugia — and the little city now 
makes much O'f him. 

If I felt like ignoring the long-winded art discussions 
of comparatively trivial things, the charm and variety of 
the town and its present-day life was in no wise lost upon 
me. 

The unheralded things, the things which the guide- 
books do not talk about, are sometimes so charming. I 
found it entrancing to descend of a morning by lovely, 
cool, stone passages from the Piazza of Vittorio Eman- 
uele to the Piazza of the Army, and watch the soldiers, 
principally cavalry, drill. Their ground was a space 
about five acres in extent, as flat as a table, set high above 
the plain, with deep ravines descending on either hand, 
and the quaint houses and public institutions of Perugia 
looking down from above. To the left, as you looked 
out over the plain, across the intervening ravine, was an- 
other spur of the town, built also on a flat ridge with the 
graceful church of St. Peter and its beautiful Italian- 
Gothic tower, and the whole road that swept along the 
edge of the cliff, making a delightful way for carriages 
and automobiles. I took delight in seeing how wonder- 
fully the deep green ravines separate one section of the 
town from another, and in watching the soldiers, Italy 
then being at war with Tripoli. 

You could stand, your arms resting upon some old 
brownish-green wall, and look out over intervening fields 



370 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

to distant ranges of mountains, or tower-like Assisi and 
Spoleto. The variety of the coloring of the plain below 
was never wearying. 

This Italian valley was so beautiful that I should like 
to say one more word about the skies and the wonderful 
landscape effects. North of here, in Florence, Venice and 
Milan, they do not occur so persistently and with such 
glorious warmth at this season of the year. At this 
height the nights were not cold, but cool, and the morn- 
ings burst with such a blaze of color as to defy the art of 
all save the greatest painters. They were not so much 
lurid as richly spiritualized, being shot through with a 
strange electric radiance. This did not mean, as it would 
so often in America, that a cloudy day was to follow. 
Rather the radiance slowly gave place to a glittering field 
of light that brought out every slope and olive orchard 
and distant cypress and pine with amazing clearness. The 
bells of the churches in Perugia and in the valley below 
were like muezzins calling to each other from their 
praying-towers. As the day closed the features of the 
landscape seemed to be set in crystal, and the greens and 
browns and grays to have at times a metallic quality. 
Outside the walls in the distance were churches, shrines, 
and monasteries, always with a cypress or two, sometimes 
with many, which stood out with great distinctness, and 
from distant hillsides you would hear laborers singing in 
the bright sun. Well might they sing, for I know of no 
place where life would present to them a fairer aspect. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE 

WITH all the treasures of my historic reading in 
mind from the lives of the Medici and Savo- 
narola to that of Michelangelo and the Flor- 
entine school of artists, I was keen to see what Florence 
would be like. Mrs. Q. had described it as the most in- 
dividual of all the Italian cities that she had seen. She 
had raved over its narrow, dark, cornice-shaded streets, 
its fortress-like palaces, its highly individual churches and 
cloisters, the way the drivers of the little open vehicles 
plied everyhere cracking their whips, until, she said, it 
sounded like a Fourth of July in Janesville. I was keen 
to see how large the dome of the cathedral would look 
and whether it would really tower conspicuously over the 
remaining buildings of the city, and whether the Arno 
would look as picturesque as it did in all the photographs. 
The air was so soft and the sun so bright, although sink- 
ing low in the west, as the train entered the city, that I 
was pleased to accept, instead of the ancient atmosphere 
which I had anticipated, the wide streets and rows of four- 
and six-family apartment houses which characterize all 
the newer sections. . They have the rich browns and 
creams of the earlier portion of Florence; but they are 
very different in their suggestion of modernity. The 
distant hills, as I could see from the car windows, were 
dotted with houses and villas occupying delightful posi- 
tions above the town. Suddenly I saw the Duomo; and 
although I knew it only from photographs I recognized 
it in an instant. It spoke for itself in a large, dignified 
way. Over the housetops it soared like a great bubble; 

371 



372 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and some pigeons flying in the air gave it the last touch 
of beauty. We wound around the city in a circle — I 
could tell this by the shifting position of the sun — 
through great yards of railway-tracks with scores of en- 
gines and lines of small box-cars; and then I saw a small 
stream and a bridge, — nothing like the Arno, of course, 
— a canal ; and the next thing we were rolling into a long 
crowded railway-station, the guards calling Firenze. I 
got up, gathered my overcoat and bags into my arms, sig- 
naled a faciiio and gave them to him ; and then I sought 
a vehicle that would convey me to the hotel for which I 
was bound — the Hotel de Ville on the Arno. I sat be- 
hind a fat driver while he cracked his whip endlessly above 
the back of a lazy horse, passing the while the showy 
fagade of Santa Maria Novella, striped with strange 
bands of white and bluish gray or drab, — a pleasing ef- 
fect for a church. I could see at once that the Florence 
of the Middle Ages was a much more condensed affair 
than that which now sprawls out in various directions 
from the Loggia dei Lanzi and the place of the cathedral. 
The narrow streets were alive with people; and the 
drivers of vehicles everywhere seemed to drive as if their 
lives depended on it. Suddenly we turned into a piazza 
very modern and very different from that of Santa Maria 
Novella; and then we were at the hotel door. It was 
a nice-looking scjuare, as I thought, not very large, — ■ 
clean and gracious. To my delight I found that my 
room opened directly upon a balcony which overlooked 
the Arno, and that from it, sitting in a chair, I could 
command all of that remarkable prospect of high-piled 
medieval houses hanging over the water's edge. It was 
beautiful. The angelus bells were ringing; there was 
a bright glow in the west where the sun was going 
down; the water of the stream was turquoise blue, and 
the walls of all the houses seemingly brown. I stood 



THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE 373 

and gazed, thinking of the pecuHarly ejfificient German 
manager I had encountered, the German servants who 
were in charge of this hotel, and the fact that Florence 
had long since radically changed from what it was. 
A German porter came and brought my bags; a Ger- 
man maid brought hot water; a German clerk took my 
full name and address for the register, and possibly 
for the police; and then I was at liberty to unpack and 
dress for dinner. Instead I took a stroll out along the 
stream-banks to study the world of jewelry shops which 
I saw there, and the stands for flowers, and the idling 
crowd. 

I dare not imagine what the interest of Florence would 
be to any one who did not know her strange and varie- 
gated history, but I should think, outside of the surround- 
ing scenic beauty, it would be little or nothing. Unless 
one had a fondness for mere quaintness and gloom and 
solidity, it would in a way be repulsive, or at best dreary. 
But lighted by the romance, the tragedy, the lust, the 
zealotry, the brutality and the artistic idealism that sur- 
rounds such figures as Dante, the Medici, Savonarola, 
Donatello, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, and the whole 
world of art, politics, trade, war, it takes on a strange lus- 
ter to me, that of midnight waters lighted by the fitful 
gleams of distant fires. I never think of it without see- 
ing in my mind's eye the Piazza della Signoria as it must 
have looked on that day in 1494 when that famous fiasco, 
in regard to " the test by fire," entered into between 
Savonarola and the Franciscan monks, took place, — those 
long, ridiculous processions of Dominicans and Francis- 
cans, Savonarola bearing the chalice aloft; or that other 
day when Charles VIII of France at the instance of 
Savonarola paraded the street in black helmet with man- 
tle of gold brocade, his lance leveled before him, his re- 
tainers gathered about him, and then disappointed the 



374 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

people by getting off his horse and showing himself to 
be the insignificant little man that he was, almost de- 
formed and with an idiotic expression of countenance. 
Neither can I forget the day that Savonarola was be- 
headed and burnt for his religious zealotry in this same 
Piazza della Signoria; nor all the rivals of the Medici 
hung from the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio or be- 
headed in the Bargello. Think of the tonsured friars and 
grave citizens of this medieval city, under Savonarola's 
fiery incitement, their heads garlanded with flowers, min- 
gling with the overwrought children called to help in puri- 
fying the city, dancing like David before the ark and 
shouting " Long live Christ and the Virgin, our rulers " ; 
of the days when Alessandro Medici and his boon compan- 
ion and cousin, Lorenzo, rode about the city on a mule 
together, defiling the virtue of innocent girls, roistering 
in houses of ill repute, and drinking and stabbing to their 
hearts' content; of Era Girolamo preaching to excited 
•crowds in the Duomo and of his vision of a black cross 
over Rome, a red one over Jerusalem; of Machiavelli writ- 
ing his brochure " The Prince " ; and of Michelangelo 
defending the city walls as an engineer. Can any other 
city match this spectacular, artistic, melodramatic prog- 
ress in so short a space of time, or present the galaxy of 
artists, the rank company of material masters such as the 
Medici, the Pazzi, the Strozzi, plotting and counterplot- 
ting to the accompaniment of lusts and murders? Other 
cities have had their amazing hours, all of them, from 
Rome to London. But Florence ! It has always seemed 
to me that the literary possibilities of Florence, in spite 
of the vast body of literature concerning it, have scarcely 
been touched. 

The art section alone is so vast and so brilliant that 
one of the art merchants told me while I was there that at 
least forty thousand of the city's one hundred and seventy 



THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE 375 

thousand population is foreign (principally English and 
American), drawn to it by its art merits, and that the 
tide of travel from April to October is amazing. I can 
believe it. You will hear German and English freely 
spoken in all the principal thoroughfares. 

Because of a gray day and dull, following the warmth 
and color and light of Perugia and Rome, Florence 
seemed especially dark and somber to me at first; but I 
recovered. Its charm and beauty grew on me by degrees 
so that by the time I had done inspecting Santa Maria 
Novella, Santa Croce, San Marco, the Cathedral group 
and the Bargello, I was really desperately in love with the 
art oi it all, and after I had investigated the galleries, the 
Pitti, Uffizi, Belle Arti, and the cloisters, I was satisfied 
that I could find it in my heart to live here and work, a 
feeling I had in many other places in Europe. 

Truly, however, there is no other city in Europe just 
like Florence; it has all the distinction of great individ- 
uality. My mood changed about, at times, as I thought 
of the different periods of its history, the splendor of its 
ambitions or the brutality of its methods ; but when I was 
in the presence of some of its perfect works of art, such 
as Botticehi's " Spring " in the Belle Arti, or Michel- 
angelo's " Tombs of the Medici " in San Lorenzo, or Ti- 
tian's " Magdalen," or Raphael's " Leo X " in the Pitti, or 
Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco (the journey of the three kings 
to Bethlehem) in the old Medici Palace, then I was ready 
to believe that nothing could be finer than Florence. I 
realized now that of all the cities In Europe that I saw 
Florence was possessed of the most intense art at- 
mosphere, — something that creeps over your soul in a 
grim realistic way and causes you to repeat over and 
over : " Amazing men worked here — amazing men ! " 

It was so strange to find driven home to me, — even 
more here than in Rome, that illimitable gulf that divides 



Z7^ A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

ideality of thought and illusion from reality. Men 
painted the illusions of Christianity concerning the saints 
and the miracles at this time better than ever before or 
since, and they believed something else. A Cosimo 
Medici who could patronize the Papacy with one hand 
and make a cardinal into a pope, could murder a rival 
with the other ; and Andrea del Castagno, who was seek- 
ing to shine as a painter of religious art — madonnas, 
transfigurations, and the like — could murder a Domenico 
Veneziano in order to have no rival in what he considered 
to be a permanent secret of how to paint in oils. The 
same munificence that could commission Michelangelo to 
design and execute a magnificent fagade for San Lorenzo 
(it was never done, of course) could suborn the elective 
franchise of the people and organize a school on the lines 
of Plato's Academy. In other words, in Florence as in 
the Court of Alexander VI at Rome, we find life stripped 
of all sham in action, in so far as an individual and his 
conscience were concerned, and filled with the utmost 
subtlety in so far as the individual and the public were 
concerned. Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, Andrea del 
Castagno, Machiavelli, the Pazzi, the Strozzi, — in fact, 
the whole " kit and kaboodle " of the individuals compris- 
ing the illustrious life that foregathered here, were cut 
from the same piece of cloth. They were, one and all, as 
we know, outside of a few artistic figures, shrewd, calcu- 
lating, relentless and ruthless seekers after power and 
position; lust, murder, gormandizing, panoplizing, were 
the order of the day. Religion, — it was to be laughed 
at ; weakness, — it was to be scorned. Poverty was to 
be misused. Innocence was to be seized upon and con- 
verted. Laughing at virtue and satisfying themselves al- 
ways, they went their way, building their grim, dark, 
almost windowless palaces ; preparing their dungeons and 
erecting their gibbets for their enemies. No wonder 



THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE 377 

Savonarola saw " a black cross over Rome." They 
struck swiftly and surely and smiled blandly and appar- 
ently mercifully; they had the Asiatic notion of morality, 
— charity, virtue, and the like, combined with a ruth- 
less indifference to them. Power was the thing they 
craved — power and magnificence ; and these were the 
things they had. But, oh, Florence ! Florence ! how you 
taught the nothingness of life itself; its shams; its false- 
hoods; its atrocities; its uselessness. It has never been 
any wonder to me that the saddest, darkest, most pathetic 
figure in all art, Michelangelo Buonarroti, should have 
appeared and loved and dreamed and labored and died 
at this time. His melancholy was a fit commentary on 
his age, on life, and on all art. Oh, Buonarroti, loneliest 
of figures: I think I understand how it was with you. 

Bear with me while I lay a flower on this great grave. 
I cannot think of another instance in art in which in- 
domitable will and almost superhuman energy have been 
at once so frustrated and so successful. 

I never think of the great tomb for which the Moses 
in San Pietro In Vincoli — large, grave, thoughtful ; the 
man who could walk with God — and the slaves in the 
Louvre were intended without being filled with a vast as- 
tonishment and grief to think that life should not have 
permitted this design to come to fulfilment. To think 
that a pope so powerful as Julius should have planned a 
tomb so magnificent, with Michelangelo to scheme it out 
and actually to begin it, and then never permit it to reach 
completion. All the way northward through Italy this 
Idea of a parallelogram with forty figures on It and cov- 
ered with reliefs and other ornaments haunted me. At 
Florence, in the Belle ArtI, I saw more of the figures 
(casts), designed for this tomb — strange, unfolding 
thoughts half -hewn out of the rock, which suggest the 
source from which Rodin has drawn his inspiration, — 



378 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and my astonishment grew. Before I was out of Italy, 
this man and his genius, the mere dreams of the things 
he hoped to do, enthralled me so that to me he has be- 
come the one great art figure of the world. Colossal 
is the word for Michelangelo, — so vast that life was too 
short for him to suggest even a tithe of what he felt. 
But even the things that he did, how truly monumental 
they are. 

I am sure I am not mistaken when I say that there is 
a profound sadness, too, running through all that he ever 
did. His works are large. Gargantuan, and profoundly 
melancholy; witness the Moses that I have been talking 
of, to say nothing of the statues on the tombs of the 
Medici in San Lorenzo at Florence. I saw them in 
Berlin, reproduced there in plaster in the Kaiser-Fried- 
erich-Museum, and once more I was filled with the same 
sense of profound, meditative melancholy. It is pres- 
ent in its most significant form here in Florence, in San 
Lorenzo, the fagade of which he once prepared to make 
magnificent, but here he was again frustrated. I saw 
the originals of these deep, sad figures that impressed 
me as no other sculptural figures ever have done. 
" Dawn and Dusk " ; " Day and Night." How they 
dwell with me constantly. I was never able to look at 
any of his later work — the Sistine Chapel frescoes, the 
figures of slaves in the Louvre, the Moses in San Pietro 
in Vincoli, or these figures here in Florence, without 
thinking how true it was that this great will had rarely 
had its way and how, throughout all his days, his energy 
was so unfortunately compelled to war with circum- 
stance. Life plays this trick on the truly great if they 
are not ruthless and of material and executive leanings. 
Art is a pale flower that blooms only in sheltered places 
and to drag it forth and force it to contend with the 
rough usages of the world is tO' destroy its perfectness. 






THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE 379 

It was so in this man's case who at times, because of un- 
lucky conjunctions, was compelled to fly for his life, 
or to sue for the means which life should have been 
honored to bestow upon him, or else to abandon great 
purposes. 

Out of such a mist of sorrow, and only so, however, 
have come these figures that now dream here year after 
year in their gray chapel, while travelers come and go, 
draining their cup of wonder, — rising ever and anon to 
the level of the beauty they contemplate. I can see 
Browning speculating upon the spirit of these figures. 
" Night " with her heavy lids, lost in great weariness ; and 
" Day " with his clear eyes. I can see Rodin gathering 
substance for his " Thinker," and Shelley marveling at 
the suggestions which arise from these mighty figures. 
There is none so great as this man who, in his medieval 
gloom and mysticism, inherited the art of Greece. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE 

WHATEVER the medieval atmosphere of 
Florence may have been, and when I was there 
the exterior appearance of the central heart 
was obviously somewhat akin to its fourteenth- and 
fifteenth-century predecessor, to-day its prevailing spirit 
is thoroughly modern. If you walk in the Piazza della 
Signoria or the Piazza del Duomo or the Via dei Cal- 
zaioli, the principal thoroughfare, you will encounter 
most of the ancient landmarks — a goodly number of 
them, but they will look out of place, as in the case of 
the palaces with their windowless ground floors, built so 
for purposes of defense, their corner lanterns, barricaded 
windows, and single great entrances easily guarded. 
To-day these regions have, if not the open spacing of 
the modern city, at least the commercial sprightliness and 
matter-of-fact business display and energy which is 
characteristic of commerce everywhere. 

I came to the Piazza della Signoria, the most famous 
square of the city, quite by accident, the first night 
following a dark, heavily corniced street from my hotel 
and at once recognized the Palazzo Vecchio, with its 
thin angular tower; the Loggia dei Lanzi, where in 
older times public performances were given in the open; 
and the equestrian statue of Cosimo I. I idled long here, 
examining the bronze slab which marks .the site of the 
stake at which Savonarola and two other Dominicans 
were burned in 1498, the fountain designed by Barto- 
lommeo Ammanati; the two lions at the step of the Log- 
gia and Benvenuto Cellini's statue of " Perseus " with the 

380 



A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE 38 1 

head of Medusa. A strange genius, that. This figure 
is as brilhant and thrilhng as it is ghastly. 

It was a lovely night. The moon came up after a 
time as it had at Perugia and Assisi and I wandered 
about these old streets, feeling the rough brown walls, 
looking in at the open shop windows, most of them dark 
and lighted by street lamps, and studying always the 
wide, over-hanging cornices. All really interesting 
cities are so delightfully different. London was so low, 
gray, foggy, heavy, drab, and commonplace; Paris was 
so smart, swift, wide-spaced, rococo, ultra-artistic, and 
fashionable ; Monte Carlo was so semi-Parisian and semi- 
Algerian or Moorish, with sunlight and palms; Rome 
was so higgledy-piggledy, of various periods, with a 
strange mingling of modernity and antiquity, and over 
all blazing sunlight and throughout all cypresses ; and 
now in Florence I found the compact, dark atmosphere, 
suggestive of what Paris once was, centuries before, 
with this distinctive feature, that the wide cornice is 
here an essential characteristic. It is so wide 1 It pro- 
trudes outward from the building line at least three or 
four feet and it may be much more, six or seven. One 
thing is certain, as I found to my utter delight on a 
rainy afternoon, you can take shelter under its wide 
reach and keep comparatively dry. Great art has been 
developed in making it truly ornamental and it gives the 
long narrow streets a most individual and, in my judg- 
ment, distinguished appearance. 

It was quite by accident, also, on this same evening 
that I came upon the Piazza del Duomo where the street 
cars are. I did not know where I was going until sud- 
denly turning a corner there I saw it — the Campanile 
at last and a portion of the Cathedral standing out soft 
and fair in the moonlight! I shall always be glad 
that I saw it so, for the strange stripe and arabesque of 



382 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

its stone work, — slabs of white or cream-colored stone 
interwoven in lovely designs with slabs of slate-colored 
granite, had an almost eerie effect. It might have been 
something borrowed from Morocco or Arabia or the 
Far East. The dome, too, as I drew nearer, and the 
Baptistery soared upwards in a magnificent way and, 
although afterwards I was sorry that the municipality 
has never had sense enough to tear out the ruck of 
buildings surrounding it and leave these three monu- 
ments — the Cathedral, the Campanile, and the Bap- 
tistery — standing free and clear, as at Pisa, on a great 
stone platform or square, — nevertheless, cramped as I 
think they are, they are surely beautiful. 

I was not so much impressed by the interior of the 
cathedral. Its beauty is largely on the outside. 

I ascended the Campanile still another day and from its 
height viewed all Florence, the windings of the Arno, 
San Miniato, Fiesole, but, try as I might, I could not 
think of it in modern terms. It was too reminiscent of 
the Italy of the Medici, of the Borgias, Julius II, Michel- 
angelo and all the glittering company who were their 
contemporaries. One thing that was strongly impressed 
upon me there was that every city should have a great 
cathedral. Not so much as a symbol or theory of re- 
ligion as an object of art, something which would indicate 
the perfection of the religious ideal taken from an artistic 
point of view. Here you can stand and admire the 
exquisite double windows with twisted columns, the 
infinite variety of the inlaid marble work, and the quaint 
architecture of the niches supported by columns. It was 
after midnight and the moon was high in the heavens 
shining down with a rich springlike effect before I finally 
returned from the Duomo Square, following the banks of 
the Arno and admiring the shadows cast by the cornices 
and so finally reached my hotel and my bed. 



i 



A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE 383 

The Uffizi and Pitti collections of paintings are abso- 
lutely the most amazing I saw abroad. There are other 
wonderful collections, the Louvre being absolutely un- 
believable for size; but here the art is so uniformly 
relative to Italy, so identified with the Renaissance, so 
suggestive of the influence and the patronage which gave 
it birth. The influence of religion, the wealth of the 
Catholic Church, the power of individual families such 
as the Medici and the Dukes of Venice are all clearly 
indicated. Botticelli's " Adoration of the Magi " in the 
Uflizi, showing the proud Medici children, the head of 
Cosimo Pater Patriae, and the company of men of letters 
and statesmen of the time, all worked in as figures about 
the Christ child, tell the whole story. Art was flattering 
to the nobility of the day. It was dependent for its 
place and position upon religion, upon the patronage of 
the Church, and so you have endless " Annunciations," 
" Adorations," " Flights into Egypt," " Crucifixions," 
"Descents from the Cross," "Entombments," "Resur- 
rections," and the like. The sensuous " Magdalena," 
painted for her form and the beauty of suggestion, you 
will encounter over and over again. All the saints in the 
calendar, the proud Popes and Cardinals of a dozen 
famiHes, the several members of the Medici family — 
they are all there. Now and then you will encounter a 
Rubens, a Van Dyck, a Rembrandt, or a Frans Hals 
from the Netherlands, but they are rare. Florence, 
Rome, Venice, Pisa, and Milan, are best represented 
by their own sculptors, painters and architects and it is 
the local men largely in whom you rejoice. The bits 
from other lands are few and far between. 

Rome for sculptures, frescoes, jewel-box churches, 
ancient ruins, but Florence for paintings and the best 
collections of medieval artistic craftsmanship. 

In the Uffizi, the Pitti, and the Belle Arti I browsed 



384 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

among the vast collections of paintings sharpening 
my understanding of the growth of Italian art. I never 
knew until I reached Florence how easy it is to trace the 
rise of Christian art, to see how one painter influenced 
another, how one school borrowed from another. It is 
all very plain. If by the least effort you fix the repre- 
sentatives of the different Italian schools in mind, you 
can judge for yourself. 

I returned three times to look at Botticelli's " Spring " 
in the Belle Arti, that marvelous picture which I think 
in many respects is the loveliest picture in the world, so 
delicate, so poetically composed, so utterly suggestive 
of the art and refinement of the painter and of life at 
its best. The "Three Graces," so lightly clad in trans- 
parent raiment, are so much the soul of joy and fresh- 
ness, the utter significance of spring. The ruder figures 
to the left do so portray the cold and blue of March, the 
warmer April, and the flower-clad May! I could never 
tire of the artistry which could have March blowing on 
April's mouth from which flowers fall into the lap of 
May. Nor could I weary of the spirit that could select 
green, sprouting things for the hem of April's garment; 
or above Spring's head place a winged and blindfolded 
baby shooting a fiery arrow at the Three Graces. To 
me Botticelli is the nearest return to the Greek spirit of 
beauty, grace and lightness of soul, combined with later 
delicacy and romance that the modern world has known. 
It is so beautiful that for me it is sad — full of the sad- 
ness that only perfect beauty can inspire. 

I think now, of all the places I saw in Italy, perhaps 
Florence really preserves in spite of its changes most of 
the atmosphere of the past, but that is surely not for 
long, either; for it is growing and the Germans are ar- 
riving. They were in complete charge of my hotel here 
and of other places, as I shortly saw, and I fancy that 



< 



< 




A NIGHT RAMBLE IN FLORENCE 385 

the future of northern Italy is to be in the hands of the 
Germans. 

As I walked about this city, lingering in its doorways, 
brooding over its pictures, reconstructing for myself the 
life of the Middle Ages, I could not help thinking how 
soon it must all go. No doubt the churches, palaces, 
and museums will be retained in their present form for 
hundreds of years, and they should be, but soon will 
come wider streets and newer houses even in the older 
section (the heart of the city) and then farewell to the 
medieval atmosphere. In all likelihood the wide cor- 
nices, now such a noticeable feature of the city, will be 
abandoned and then there will be scarcely anything to 
indicate the Florence of the past. Already the street 
cars were clang-clanging their way through certain 
sections. 

The Arno here is so different from the Tiber at Rome ; 
and yet so much like it, for it has in the main the same 
unprepossessing look, running as it does through the city 
between solid walls of stone but lacking the spectacles 
of the castle of St. Angelo, Saint Peter's, the hills and 
the gardens of the Aventine and the Janiculum. There 
are no ancient ruins on the Arno, — only the suggestive 
architecture of the Middle Ages, the wonderful Ponte 
Vecchio and the houses adjacent to it. 

Indeed the river here is nothing more than a dammed 
stream — shallow before it reaches the city, shallow after 
it leaves it, but held in check here by great stone dams 
which give it a peculiarly still mass and depth. The spirit 
of the people was not the same as that of those in Rome 
or other cities; the spirit of the crowd was different. A 
darker, richer, more phlegmatic populace, I thought. The 
people were slow, leisurely, short and comfortable. I 
sated myself on the house fronts or backs below the Ponte 
Vecchio and on the little jewelry shops of which there 



386 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

seemed to be an endless variety; and then feeling that I 
had had a taste of the city, I returned to larger things. 
The Duomo, the palaces of the Medici, the Pitti Palace, 
and that world which concerned the Council of Flor- 
ence, and the dignified goings to and fro of old Cosimo 
Pater and his descendants were the things that I wished 
to see and realize for myself if I could. 

I think we make a mistake when we assume that the 
manners, customs, details, conversation, interests and 
excitements of people anywhere were ever very much 
different from what they are now. In three or four 
hundred years from now people in quite similar situ- 
ations to our own will be wondering how we took our 
daily lives ; quite the same as our ancestors, I should say, 
and no differently from our descendants. Life works 
about the same in all times. Only exterior aspects 
change. In the particular period in which Florence, 
and all Italy for that matter, was so remarkable, Italy 
was alive with ambitious men — strong, remarkable, 
capable characters. They made the wonder of the life, 
it was not the architecture that did it and not the routine 
movements of the people. Florence has much the same 
architecture to-day, better in fact; but not the men. 
Great men make great times — and only struggling, 
ambitious, vainglorious men make the existence of the 
artist possible, however much he may despise them. 
They are the only ones who in their vainglory and 
power can readily call upon him to do great things 
and supply the means. Witness Raphael and Michel- 
angelo in Italy, Rubens in Holland, and Velasquez in 
Spain. 



« 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 

IT was while I was in Florence that a light was thrown 
on an industry of which I had previously known little 
and which impressed me much. 
Brooding over the almost endless treasures of the city, 
I ambled into the Strozzi Palace one afternoon, tliat 
perfect example of Florentine palatial architecture, 
then occupied by an exposition of objects of art, repro- 
ductions and originals purporting to be the work of an 
association of Italian artists. After I had seen, cursor- 
ily, most of the treasures in the Palazzo Strozzi, I en- 
countered a thing which I had long heard of but never 
seen, — an organization for the reproduction, the re- 
duplication, of all the wonders of art, and cheaply, too. 
The place was full of marbles of the loveliest character, 
replicas of famous statues in the Vatican, the Louvre, 
the Uffizi, and elsewhere; and in many instances, also, 
copies of the great pictures. There was beautiful furni- 
ture imitated, even as to age, from many of the Italian 
palaces, the Riccardi, Albizzi, Pazzi, Pitti, Strozzi, and 
others ; and as for garden-fittings — fountains, fauns, 
cupids, benches, metal gateways, pergolas, and the like, 
they were all present. They were marvelous reproduc- 
tions from some of the villas, with the patina of age 
upon them, and I thought at first that they were original. 
I was soon undeceived, for I had not been there long, 
strolling about, when an attendant brought and intro- 
duced to me a certain Prof. Ernesto Jesuram, a small, 
dark, wiry man with clear, black, crowlike eyes who 
made clear the whole situation. 

387 



388 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

The markets of the world, according to Mr. Jesuram, 
a Jew, were being flooded with cheap imitations of every 
truly worthy object of art, from Italian stone benches 
to landscapes by Corot or portraits by Frans Hals — • 
masquerading as originals ; and it had been resolved 
by this Association of Italian Artists that this was un- 
fair, not only to the buyer and the art-loving public 
generally, but also to the honest craftsman who could 
make an excellent living reproducing, frankly, copies 
of ancient works of merit at a nominal price, if only 
they were permitted to copy them. Most, in fact all 
of them, could make interesting originals but in many 
cases they would lack that trait of personality which 
makes all the difference between success and failure; 
whereas they could perfectly reproduce the masterpieces 
of others and that, too, for prices with which no for- 
eigner could compete. So they had banded themselves 
together, determined to do better work, and sell more 
cheaply than the fly-by-night rascals who were confound- 
ing and degrading all good art and to say frankly to 
each and all : " Here is a perfect reproduction of a 
very lovely thing. Do you want it at a very low cost? " 
or, " We will make for you an exact copy of anything 
that you see and admire and wish to have and we will 
make it so cheaply that you cannot afford to dicker with 
doubtful dealers who sell you imitations as originals 
and charge you outrageous prices." 

I have knocked about sufficiently in my time in the 
showy chambers of American dealers and elsewhere to 
know that there is entirely too much in what was told 
me. 

The wonder of Florence grew a little under the Pro- 
fessor's quiet commercial analysis, for after exhausting 
this matter of reproducing so cheaply, we proceeded to 
a discussion of the present conditions of the city. 



FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 389 

" It 's very different commercially from anything in 
America or the north of Europe," he said, " or even the 
north of Italy, for as yet we have scarcely anything in 
the way of commerce here. We still build in the fash- 
ion they used five hundred years ago — narrow streets 
and big cornices in order to keep up the atmosphere of 
the city, for we are not strong enough commercially 
yet to go it alone, and besides I don't think the Italians 
will ever be different. They are an easy-going race. 
They don't need the American " two dollars a day " 
to live on. Fifty centimes will do. For one thousand 
dollars (five thousand lire) you can rent a palace here 
for a year and I can show you whole floors overlooking 
gardens that you can rent for seventeen dollars a month. 
We have a garden farther out that we use as a work- 
shop here in Florence, in the heart of the city, which we 
rent for four hundred dollars a year." 

"What about the Italian's idea of progress? Isn't 
he naturally constructive ? " I asked Mr. Jesuram. 

" Rarely the Italian. Not at this date. We have 
many Jews and Germans here who are doing well, and 
foreign capital is building street-railways. I think the 
Italians will have to be fused with another nation to 
experience a new birth. The Germans are mixing with 
them. If they ever get as far south as Sicily, Italy will 
be made over; the Germans themselves will be made 
over. I notice that the Italians and Germans get along 
well together." 

I thought of the age-long wars between the Teutons 
and the Italians from the fifth to the twelfth century, 
but those days are over. They can apparently mingle 
in peace now, as I saw here and farther north. 

It was also while I was in Florence that I first became 
definitely and in an irritated way conscious of a certain 
aspect of travel which no doubt thousands of other trav- 



390 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

elers have noted for themselves but of which, nevertheless, 
I feel called upon to speak. 

I could never come in to the breakfast table either 
there, or at Rome, or in Venice, or Milan, without en- 
countering a large company of that peculiarly American 
brand of sightseers, not enormously rich, of no great 
dignity, but comfortable and above all enormously 
pleased with themselves. I could never look at any of 
this tribe, comfortably clothed, veiy pursy and fussy, 
without thinking what a far cry it is from the tempera- 
ment which makes for art or great originality to the tem- 
perament which makes for normality — the great, so- 
called sane, conservative mass. God spare me ! I '11 
admit that for general purposes, the value of breeding, 
trading, rearing of children in comfort, producing the 
living atmosphere of life in which we " find " ourselves 
and from which art, by the grace of great public oc- 
casions may rise, people of this type are essential. But 
seen individually, dissociated from great background 
masses, they are — but let me not go wild. Viewed 
from the artistic angle, the stress of great occasions, 
great emotion, great necessities, they fall into such 
pigmy weaknesses, almost ridiculous. Here abroad they 
come so regularly. Pa and Ma. Pa infrequently, and 
a little vague-looking from overwork and Hmited vision 
of soul; Ma not infrequently, a little superior, vain, 
stuffy, envious, dull and hard. I never see such a woman 
as that but my gorge rises a little. The one idea of a 
pair like this, particularly of the mother, is the getting 
her children (if there be any) properly married, the 
girls particularly, and in this phase of family politics Pa 
has obviously little to say. Their appearance abroad, 
accompanied by Henry and George, Junior, and Mary 
and Anabel, is for — I scarcely know what. It is so 
plain on the face of it that no single one of them has 



I 



FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 391 

the least inkling of what he is seeing. I sat in a 
carriage with two of them in Rome, viewing the ruins 
of the Via Appia, and when we reached the tomb of 
Csecilia Metella I heard : 

" Oh, yes. There it is. What was she, anyhow ? 
He was a Roman general, I think, and she was his wife. 
His house was next door and he built this tomb here 
so she would be near him. Is n't it wonderful ? Such 
a nice idea! " 

So far as I could make out from watching this throng 
the principal idea was to be able to say that they had 
been abroad. Poor old Florence ! Its beauty and its 
social significance passed unrecognized. Art, so far as 
I could judge from the really unmoved spectators 
present, was for crazy people. The artist was some 
weird, spindling, unfortunate fool, a little daft perhaps, 
but tolerable for a strange furore he seemed to have cre- 
ated. Great men made and used him. He was, after 
his fashion, a servant. The objectionable feature of a 
picture like Botticelli's " Spring " would be the nudity 
of the figures ! From a Rubens or a nude Raphael we 
lead brash, unctuous, self-conscious Mary away in 
silence. If we encounter, perchance, quite unexpectedly 
a " Leda " by Michelangelo or a too nude " Assumption " 
by Bronzino, we turn away in disgust. Art must be 
limited to conventional theories and when so limited is 
not worth much anyhow. 

It was amazing to see them strutting in and out, their 
good clothes rustling, an automobile in waiting, noisily 
puffing the while they gather aimless " impressions " 
wherewith to browbeat their neighbors. George and 
Henry and Mary and Anabel, protesting half the time or 
in open rebellion, are duly led to see the things which 
have been the most enthusiastically recommended, be 
they palaces or restaurants. 



392 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



I often wondered what it was — the best — which 
these people got out of their trip abroad. The heavy 
Germans I saw I always suspected of having solid Teu- 
tonic understanding and appreciation of everything; the 
English were uniformly polite, reserved, intelligent, ap- 
parently discriminating. But these Americans! If you 
told them the true story of Antinous, whose head I saw 
them occasionally admiring; or forced upon them the 
true details of the Borgias, the Sforzas, the Medici, or 
even the historical development of Art, they would fly 
in horror. They have no room in their little crania for 
anything save their own notions, — the standards of the 
Methodist Church at Keokuk. I think, sometimes, per- 
haps it is because we are all growing to a different stand- 
ard, trying to make life something different from what 
it has always been, or appeared to be, that all the 
trouble comes about. Time will remedy that. Life, — its 
heavy, interminable processes, — will break any theory. 
I conceive of life as a bhnd goddess, pouring from 
separate jars, one of which she holds in each hand, 
simultaneously, the streams of good and evil, which 
mingling, make this troubled existence, flowing ever 
onward to the sea. 

It was also while I was at Florence that I finally de- 
cided to change my plan and visit Venice. " It is a city 
without a disappointment," a publisher- friend of mine had 
one time assured me, with the greatest confidence. And 
so, here at Florence, on this first morning, I altered 
my plans; I changed my ticket at Thomas Cook's and 
crowded Venice in between Florence and 'Milan. I gave 
myself a stay of four days, deciding to lengthen it if I 
chose. 

1 really think that every traveler of to-day owes a 
debt of gratitude to Thomas Cook & Sons. I never 
knew, until I went abroad what an accommodation the 



1 



FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 393 

offices of this concern are. Your mail is always courte- 
ously received and cared for ; your routes and tickets are 
changed and altered at your slightest whim; your local 
bank is their cash-desk and the only advisers you have, 
if you are alone and without the native tongue at your 
convenience, are their clerks and agents at the train. It 
does not make any difference to me that that is their 
business and that they make a profit. In a foreign city 
where you are quite alone you would grant them twice 
the profit for this courtesy. And it was my experience, 
in the slight use I made of their service, that their orders 
and letters of advice were carefully respected and that 
when you came conducted by Thomas Cook, whether you 
took the best or the worst, you were politely and assidu- 
ously looked after. 

One of the most amusing letters that I received while 
abroad was from this same publisher-friend who wanted 
me to go to Venice. Not so long before I left Rome, he 
had arrived with his wife, daughter, and a young girl 
friend of his daughter whose first trip abroad they were 
sponsoring. At a luncheon they had given me, the mat- 
ter of seeing the Pope had come up and I mentioned that 
I had been so fortunate as to find some one who could 
introduce me, and that it was just possible, if they 
wished it, that my friend would extend his courtesy to 
them. The young girls in particular were eager, but I 
was not sure. I left Rome immediately afterward, writ- 
ing to my British correspondent, bespeaking his interest 
in their behalf, and at the same time to my publisher- 
friend that I was doing so. As an analysis of girlhood 
vagaries, keen and clever, read his letter : 

My Dear Dreiser: 

The young woman who thinks she wants to see the Pope 
goes under the name of Margaret, — but I would n't try very 
hard to bring it about, because if Margaret went, my daughter 



394 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

would want to go, and if Margaret and my daughter went, my 
wife would feel out in the cold. (The old man can stand it.) 

Margaret's motives are simply childish curiosity, possibly 
combined with a slight desire to give pleasure to the Holy 
Father. 

But don't try to get that Papal interview for Margaret unless 
you can get it for all the ladies. You will introduce a serpent 
into my paradise. 

No serpent was introduced because I could n't get the 
interview. 

And the cells and cloister of San Marco, — shall I 
ever forget them? I went there on a spring morning 
(spring in Italy) when the gleaming light outside filled 
the cloister with a cool brightness, and studied the fres- 
coes of Era Angelico and loitered between the columns 
of the arches in the cloister proper, meditating upon the 
beauty of the things here gathered. Really, Italy is too 
beautiful. One should be a poet in soul, insatiable as to 
art, and he should linger here forever. Each poorest 
cell here has a small fresco by Era Angelico, and the re- 
fectory, the chapter house, and the foresteria are filled 
with large compositions, all rich in that symbolism which 
is only wonderful because of the art-feeling of the 
master. I lingered in the cells, the small chambers once 
occupied by Savonarola, and meditated on the great 
zealot's imaginings. In a way his dream of the destruc- 
tion of the Papacy came true. Even as he preached, the 
Reformation was at hand, only he did not know it. 
Martin Luther was coming. The black cross was over 
Rome! And also true was his thought that the end of 
the old order in Italy had come. It surely had. Never 
afterwards was it quite the same and never would it be 
so again. And equally true was his vision of the red 
cross over Jerusalem, for never was the simple humanism 
of Jesus so firmly based in the minds of men as it is to- 
day, though all creeds and religious theories totter wear- 



FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 395 

ily to their ruin. Savonarola was destroyed, but not his 
visions or his pleas. They are as fresh and powerful 
to-day, as magnetic and gripping, as are any that have 
been made in history. 

It was the same with the Bargello, the tombs of the 
Medici, San Miniato and the basilica and monastery 
at Fiesole. That last, with the wind singing in the 
cypresses, a faint mist blowing down the valley of the 
Arno, all Florence lying below and the lights of evening 
beginning to appear, stands fixed and clear in my mind. 
I saw it for the last time the evening before I left. I sat 
on a stone bench overlooking a wonderful prospect, re- 
joicing in the artistic spirit of Italy which has kept fresh 
and clean these wonders of art, when I was approached 
by a brown Dominican, his feet and head bare, his body 
stout and comfortable. He asked for alms ! I gave 
him a lira for the sake of Savonarola who belonged to 
his order and — because of the spirit of Italy, that in 
the midst of a changing, commercializing world still 
ministers to these shrines of beauty and keeps them in- 
tact and altogether lovely. 

One last word and I am done. I strolled out from 
Santa Croce one evening a little confused by the charm 
of all I had seen and wondering how I could best bestow 
my time for the remaining hours of light. I tried first 
to find the house of Michelangelo which I fancied was 
somewhere in the vicinity, but not finding it, came finally 
to the Arno which I followed upstream. The evening 
was very pleasant, quite a sense of spring in the air 
and of new-made gardens, and I overcame my disap- 
pointment at having failed to accomplish my original 
plan. I passed new streets, wider than the old ones in 
the heart of the city, with street lamps, arc-lights, mod- 
ern awnings and a trolley-car running in the distance. 
Presently I came to a portion of the Arno lovelier than 



396 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



any I had yet seen. Of course the walls through which 
it flows in the city had disappeared and in their place 
came grass-covered banks w^ith those tall thin poplars 
I had so much admired in France. The waters were a 
" Nile green " at this hour and the houses, collected in 
small groups, were brown, yellow, or white, with red or 
brown roofs and brown or green shutters. The old idea 
of arches with columns and large projecting roofs still 
persisted in these newer, outlying houses and made me 
wonder whether Florence might not, after all, always 
keep this characteristic. 

As I went farther out the houses grew less frequent 
and lovely bluish-black hills appeared. There was a 
smoke-stack in the distance, just to show that Florence 
was not dead to the idea of manufacturing, and beyond 
in a somewhat different direction the dome of the cathe- 
dral, — that really impressive dome. 

Some men were fishing in the stream from the 
bank, apparently catching nothing. I noticed the lovely 
cypresses of the South in the distance, the large villas on 
the hills, and here and there clumps of those tall, slender 
trees of France, not conspicuous elsewhere on my 
journey. 

In one place I noticed the largest display of washing 
I have ever seen, quite the largest, — a whole field of 
linen, no less, hung out to dry; and in another place 
some slow-moving men cutting wood. 

It was very warm, very pleasant, slightly suggestive 
of rain, with the smoke going up straight, and after a 
while when the evening church-bells were beginning to 
ring, calling to each other from vale and hill, my 
sense of springtime and pleasant rural and suburban 
sweetness was complete. 

Laughter carried I noticed, in some peculiar, echoing 
way. The music of the bells was essentially quieting. 



FLORENCE OF TO-DAY 397 

I had no sense of Florence, old or new, but just spring, 
hope, new birth. And as I turned back after a time I 
knew I had acquired a different and very precious mem- 
ory of Florence — something that would last me years 
and years. I should always think of the Arno as it 
looked this evening — how safe and gracious and still. 
I should always hear the voices in laughter, and the 
bells; I should always see the children playing on the 
green banks, quite as I used to play on the Wabash and 
the Tippecanoe; and their voices in Italian were no less 
sweet than our childish voices. I had a feeling that 
somehow the spirit of Italy was like that of America, 
and that somehow there is close kinship between us and 
Italy, and that it was not for nothing that an Italian 
discovered America or that Americans, of all people, 
have apparently loved Italy most and rivaled it most 
closely in their periods of greatest achievement. 



CHAPTER XL 

MARIA BASTIDA 

IN studying out my itinerary at Florence I came upon 
the homely advice in Baedeker that in Venice " care 
should be taken in embarking and disembarking, es- 
pecially when the tide is low, exposing the slimy lower 
steps." That, as much as anything I had ever read, 
visualized this wonder city to me. These Italian cities, 
not being large, end so quickly that before you can say 
Jack Robinson you are out of them and away, far into 
the country. It was early evening as we pulled out of 
Florence; and for a while the country was much the 
same as it had been in the south — hill-towns, medieval 
bridges and strongholds, the prevailing solid browns, 
pinks, grays and blues of the architecture, the white 
oxen, pigs and shabby carts, but gradually, as we neared 
Bologna, things seemed to take on a very modern air of 
factories, wide streets, thoroughly modern suburbs and 
the like. It grew dark shortly after that and the country 
was only favored by the rich radiance of the moon which 
made it more picturesque and romantic, but less definite 
and distinguishable. 

In the compartment with me were two women, one a 
comfortable-looking matron traveling from Florence to 
Bologna, the other a young girl of twenty or twenty- 
one, of the large languorous type, and decidedly good 
looking. She was very plainly dressed and evidently 
belonged to the middle class. 

The married Italian lady was small and good-looking 
and bourgeoise. Considerably before dinner-time, and 
as we were nearing Bologna, she opened a small basket 

398 



MARIA BASTIDA 399 

which she carried and took from it a sandwich, an apple, 
and a bit of cheese, which she ate placidly. For some 
reason she occasionally smiled at me good-naturedly, but 
not speaking Italian, I was without the means of making 
a single observation. At Bologna I assisted her with 
her parcels and received a smiling backward glance and 
then I settled myself in my seat wondering what the 
remainder of the evening would bring forth. I was not 
so very long in discovering. 

Once the married lady of Bologna had disappeared, 
my young companion took on new life. She rose, 
smoothed down her dress and reclined comfortably in 
her seat, her cheek laid close against the velvet-covered 
arm, and looked at me occasionally out of half-closed 
eyes. She finally tried to make herself more comfort- 
able by lying down and I offered her my fur overcoat 
as a pillow. She accepted it with a half-smile. 

About this time the dining-car steward came through 
to take a memorandum of those who wished to reserve 
places for dinner. He looked at the young lady but she 
shook her head negatively. I made a sudden decision. 
" Reserve two places," I said. The servitor bowed po- 
litely and went away. I scarcely knew why I had said 
this, for I was under the impression my young lady com- 
panion spoke only Italian, but I was trusting much to my 
intuition at the moment. 

A little later, when it was drawing near the meal time, 
I said, " Do you speak English ? " 

" Non," she replied, shaking her head. 

" Sprechen Sie Deutschf" 

" Ein wenig," she replied, with an easy, babyish, half- 
German, half-Italian smile. 

" Sie sind dock Italianisch/' I suggested. 

" Oh, Old! " she replied, and put her head down com- 
fortably on my coat. 



400 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

'' Reisen Sie nach Venedigf" I Inquired. 

" Old," she nodded. She half smiled again. 

I had a real thrill of satisfaction out of all this, for 
although I speak abominable German, just sufficient to 
make myself understood by a really clever person, yet 
I knew, by the exercise of a little tact I should have a 
companion to dinner. 

" You will take dinner with me, won't you? " I stam- 
mered in my best German. " I do not understand Ger- 
man very well, but perhaps we can make ourselves under- 
stood. I have two places." 

She hesitated, and said — '' Ich bin nicht hungerich" 

" But for company's sake," I replied. 

" Mais, oui" she replied indifferently. 

I then asked her whether she was going to any par- 
ticular hotel in Venice — I was bound for the Royal 
Danieli — and she replied that her home was in Venice. 

Maria Bastida was a most interesting type. She was 
a Diana for size, pallid, with a full rounded body. 
Her hair was almost flaxen and her hands large but not 
unshapelA^ She seemed to be strangely world-weary 
and yet strangely passionate — the kind of mind and 
body that does and does not, care; a kind of dull, smol- 
dering fire burning within her and yet she seemed 
indifferent into the bargain. She asked me an occa- 
sional question about New York as we dined, and though 
wine was proffered she drank little and, true to her 
statement that she was not hungry, ate little. She con- 
fided to me in soft, difficult German that she was trying 
not to get too stout, that her mother was German and 
her father Italian and that she had been visiting an uncle 
in Florence who was in the grocery business. I won- 
dered how she came to be traveling first class. 

The time passed. Dinner was over and in several 
hours more we would be in Venice. We returned to 



MARIA BASTIDA 401 

our compartment and because the moon was shining 
magnificently we stood in the corridor and watched its 
radiance on clustered cypresses, villa-crowned hills, great 
stretches of flat prairie or marsh land, all barren of trees, 
and occasionally on little towns all white and brown, 
glistening in the clear light. 

" It will be a fine night to see Venice for the first 
time," I suggested. 

" Oh, ouil Herrlich! Prachtvoll! " she replied in her 
queer mixture of French and German. 

I liked her command of sounding German words. 

She told me the names of stations at which we 
stopped, and finally she exclaimed c|uite gaily, " Now we 
are here ! The Lagoon ! " 

I looked out and we were speeding over a wide body 
of water. It was beautifully silvery and in the distance 
I could see the faint outlines of a city. Very shortly 
we were in a car yard, as at Rome and Florence, and then 
under a large train shed, and then, conveyed by an enthu- 
siastic Italian porter, we came out on the wide stone plat- 
form that faces the Grand Canal. Before me were the 
white walls of marble buildings and intervening in long, 
waving lines a great street of water; the gondolas, black, 
shapely, a great company of them, nudging each other 
on its rippling bosom, green-stained stone steps, sharply 
illuminated by electric lights leading down to them, a 
great crowd of gesticulating porters and passengers. I 
startled Maria by grabbing her by the arm, exclaiming 
in German, " Wonderful ! Wonderful ! " 

"Est ist herrlich'' (It is splendid), she replied. 

We stepped into a gondola, our bags being loaded in 
afterwards. It was a singularly romantic situation, 
when you come to think of it: entering Venice by moon- 
light and gliding off in a gondola in company with an 
unknown and charming Italian girl who smiled and 



402 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

sighed by turns and fairly glowed with delight and pride 
at my evident enslavement to the beauty of it all. 

She was directing the gondolier where to leave her 
when I exclaimed, " Don't leave me — please ! Let 's 
do Venice together ! " 

She was not offended. She shook her head, a bit re- 
gretfully I like to think, and smiled most charmingly. 
" Venice has gone to your head. To-morrow you '11 for- 
get me! " 

And there my adventure ended! 

It is a year, as I write, since I last saw the flaxen- 
haired Maria, and I find she remains quite as firmly 
fixed in my memory as Venice itself, which is perhaps 
as it should be. 

But the five or six days I spent in Venice — how they 
linger. How shall one ever paint water and light and 
air in words. I had wild thoughts as I went about of a 
splendid panegyric on Venice — a poem, no less — but 
finally gave it up, contenting myself with humble notes 
made on the spot which at some time I hoped to weave 
into something better. Here they are — a portion of 
them — the task unfinished. 

What a city I To think that man driven by the hand of 
circumstance — the dread of destruction — should have sought 
out these mucky sea islands and eventually reared as splendid 
a thing as this. " The Veneti driven by the Lombards," 
reads my Baedeker, " sought the marshy islands of the sea." 
Even so. Then came hard toil, fishing, trading, the w^onders of 
the wealth of the East. Then came the Doges, the cathe- 
dral, these splendid semi-Byzantine palaces. Then came the 
painters, religion, romance, history. To-day here it stands, a 
splendid shell, reminiscent of its former glory. Oh, Venice 1 
Venice ! 

The Grand Canal under a glittering moon. The clocks strik- 



MARIA BASTIDA 403 

ing twelve. A horde of black gondolas. Lovely cries. The 
rest is silence. Moon picking out the ripples in silver and black. 
Think of these old stone steps, w^hite marble stained green, 
laved by the vi^aters of the sea these hundreds of years. A long, 
narrow street of water. A silent boat passing. And this is a 
city of a hundred and sixty thousand ! 

Wonderful painted arch doorways and windows. Trefoil and 
quadrifoil decorations. An old iron gate with some statues 
behind it. A balcony with flowers. The Bridge of Sighs ! 
Nothing could be so perfect as a city of water. 

The Lagoon at midnight under a full moon. Now I think I 
know what Venice is at its best. Distant lights, distant voices. 
Some one singing. There are pianos in this sea-isle city, play- 
ing at midnight. Just now a man silhouetted blackly, under a 
dark arch. Our gondola takes us into the very hallway of the 
Royal-Danieli. 

Water ! Water ! The music of all earthly elements. The 
lap of water ! The sigh of water ! The flow of water ! In 
Venice you have it everywhere. It sings at the base of your 
doorstep ; it purrs softly under your window ; it suggests the 
eternal rhythm and the eternal flow at every angle. Time is 
running away; life is running away, and here in Venice, at 
every angle (under your window) is its symbol. I know of no 
city which at once suggests the lapse of time hourly, momen- 
tarily, and yet soothes the heart because of it. For all its move- 
ment or because jof it, it is gay, light-hearted, without being 
enthusiastic. The peace that passes all understanding is here, 
soft, rhythmic, artistic. Venice is as gay as a song, as lovely as 
a jewel (an opal or an emerald), as rich as marble and as great 
as verse. There can only be one Venice in all the world ! 

No horses, no wagons, no clanging of cars. Just the patter 
of human feet. You listen here and the very language is musi- 
cal. The voices are soft. Why should they be loud? They 
have nothing to contend with. I am wild about this place. 
There is a sweetness in the hush of things which woos, and yet 
it is not the hush of silence. All is life here, all movement — 
a sweet, musical gaiety. I wonder if murder and robbery can 



404 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

flourish in any of these sweet streets. The Hfe here is like that 
of children playing. I swear in all my life I have never had 
such ravishing sensations of exquisite art-joy, of pure, delicious 
enthusiasm for the physical, exterior aspect of a city. It is as 
mild and sweet as moonlight itself. 

This hotel, Royal Danieli, is a delicious old palace, laved on 
one side by a canal. My room commands the whole of the 
Lagoon. George Sand and Alfred de Musset occupied a room 
here somewhere. Perhaps I have it. 

Venice is so markedly different from Florence. There all is 
heavy, somber, defensive, serious. Here all is light, airy, grace- 
ful, delicate. There could be no greater variation. Italy is 
such a wonderful country. It has Florence, Venice, Rome and 
Naples, to say nothing of Milan and the Riviera, which should 
really belong to it. No cornices here in Venice. They are all 
left behind in Florence. 

What shall I say of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace — 
mosaics of history, utterly exquisite. The least fragment of St. 
Mark's I consider of the utmost value. The Ducal Palace 
should be guarded as one of the great treasures of the world. 
It is perfect. 

Fortunately I saw St. Mark's in the morning, in clear, refresh- 
ing, springlike sunlight. Neither Venice nor Florence have the 
hard glitter of the South — only a rich brightness. The domes 
are almost gold in effect. The nine frescoes of the faqade, gold, 
red and blue. The walls, cream and gray. Before it is the 
oblique quadrangle which necessitates your getting far to one 
side to see the church squarely — a perfect and magnificently 
individual jewel. All the great churches are that, I notice. 
Overhead a sky of blue. Before you a great, smooth pavement, 
crowded with people, the Campanile (just recompleted) soaring 
heavenward in perfect lines. What a square ! What a treasure 
for a city to have ! Momentarily this space is swept over by 
great clouds of pigeons. The new reproduction of the old 
Campanile glows with a radiance all its own. Above all, the 
gilded crosses of the church. To the right the lovely arcaded 
iaqade of the library. To the right of the church, facing the 



.,du ' '■ 




.it;:: '_w« '..\» --il-MiJ 




There can only be one Venice 



MARIA BASTIDA 405 

square, the fretted beauty of the Doge's Palace — a portion of 
it. As I was admiring it a warship in the harbor fired a great 
gun — twelve o'clock. Up went all my pigeons, thousands it 
seemed, sweeping in great restless circles while church bells 
began to chime and whistles to blow. Where are the manufac- 
tories of Venice? 



At first you do not realize it, but suddenly it occurs to you — 
a city of one hundred and sixty thousand without a wagon, or 
horse, without a long, wide street, anywhere, without trucks, 
funeral processions, street cars. All the shops doing a brisk 
business, citizens at work everywhere, material pouring in and 
out, but no wagons — only small barges and gondolas. No 
noise save the welcome clatter of human feet; no sights save 
those which have a strange, artistic pleasantness. You can hear 
people talking sociably, their voices echoed by the strange cool 
walls. You can hear birds singing high up in pretty windows 
where flowers trail downward; you can hear the soft lap of 
waters on old steps at times, the softest, sweetest music of all. 

I find boxes, papers, straw, vegetable waste, all cast indiffer- 
ently into the water and all borne swiftly out to sea. People 
open windows and cast out packages as if this were the only 
way. I walked into the Banca di Napoli this afternoon, facing 
the Grand Canal. It was only a few moments after the regular 
closing hour. I came upon it from some narrow lane — some 
" dry street." It was quite open, the ground floor. There was 
a fine, dark-columned hall opening out upon the water. Where 
were the clerks, I wondered? There were none. Where that 
ultimate hurry and sense of life that characterizes the average 
bank at this hour? Nowhere. It was lovely, open, dark, — as 
silent as a ruin. When did the bank do business, I asked myself. 
No answer. I watched the waters from its steps and then went 
away. 

One of the little tricks of the architects here is to place a 
dainty little Gothic lialcony above a door, perhaps the only one 
on the faqade, and that hung with vines. 



4o6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Venice is mad about campaniles. It has a dozen, I think, 
some of them leaning, like the tower at Pisa. 

I must not forget the old rose of the clouds in the west. 

A gondolier selling vegetables and crying his wares is pure 
music. At my feet white steps laved by whitish-blue water. 
Tall, cool, damp walls, ten feet apart. Cool, wet, red brick 
pavements. The sun shining above makes one realize how 
lovely and cool it is here ; and birds singing everywhere. 

Gondolas doing everything, carrying casks, coal, lumber, lime, 
stone, flour, bricks, and boxed supplies generally, and others 
carrying vegetables, fruit, kindling and flowers. Only now I 
saw a boat slipping by crowded with red geraniums. 

Lovely pointed windows and doors ; houses, with colonnades, 
trefoils, quadrifoils, and exquisite fluted cornices to match, mak- 
ing every house that strictly adheres to them a jewel. It is 
Gothic, crossed with Moorish and Byzantine fancy. Some of 
them take on the black and white of London smoke, though why 
I have no idea. Others being colored richly at first are weath- 
ered by time into lovely half-colors or tones. 

These little canals are heavenly ! They wind like scattered 
ribbons, flung broadcast, and the wind touches them only in spots, 
making the faintest ripples. Mostly they are as still as death. 
They have exquisite bridges crossing in delightful arches and 
wonderful doors and steps open into them, steps gray or yellow 
or black with age, steps that have green and brown moss on 
them and that are alternately revealed or hidden by a high or 
low tide. Here comes a gondolier now, peddling oranges. The 
music of his voice ! 

Latticework is everywhere, and it so obviously belongs here. 
Latticework in the churches, the houses, the public buildings, 
Venice loves it. It is oriental and truly beautiful. 

I find myself at a branch station of the water street-car 
service. There are gondolas here, too, — a score for hire. This 
man hails me genially, his brown hands and face, and small, old. 



I 



MARIA BASTIDA 407 

soft roll hat a picture in the sun. I feel as if I were dreaming 
or as if this were some exquisite holiday of my childhood. One 
could talk for years of these passages in which, amidst the 
shadow and sunlight of cool, gray walls a gleam of color has 
shown itself. You look down narrow courts to lovely windows 
or doors or bridges or niches with a virgin or a saint in them. 
Now it is a black-shawled housewife or a fat, phlegmatic man 
that turns a corner; now a girl in a white skirt and pale green 
shawl, or a red skirt and a black shawl. Unexpected doorways, 
dark and deep with pleasant industries going on inside, bakeries 
with a wealth of new, warm bread; butcheries with red meat 
and brass scales; small restaurants, where appetizing roasts and 
meat-pies are displayed. Unexpected bridges, unexpected 
squares, unexpected streams of people moving in the sun, unex- 
pected terraces, unexpected boats, unexpected voices, unexpected 
songs. That is Venice. 

To-day I took a boat on the Grand Canal to the Giardino 
which is at the eastern extreme of the city. It was evening. I 
found a lovely island just adjoining the gardens — a Piazza 
d'Arena. Rich green grass and a line of small trees along three 
sides. Silvery water. A second leaning tower and more islands 
in the distance. Cool and pleasant, with that lovely sense of 
evening in the air which comes only in spring. They said it 
would be cold in Venice, but it is n't. Birds twittering, the 
waters of the bay waveless, the red, white and brown colors of 
the city showing in rich patches. I think if there is a heaven 
on earth, it is Venice in spring. 

Just now the sun came out and I witnessed a Turner effect. 
First this lovely bay was suffused with a silvery-gold light — its 
very surface. Then the clouds in the west broke into ragged 
masses. The sails, the islands, the low buildings in the distance 
began to stand out brilliantly. Even the Campanile, San 
Giorgio Maggiore and the Salute took on an added glory. I 
was witnessing a great sky-and-water song, a poem, a picture — 
something to identify Venice with my life. Three ducks went 
by, high in the air, honking as they went. A long black flotilla 
of thin-prowed coal barges passed in the foreground. The 
engines of a passing steamer beat rhythmically and I breathed 
deep and joyously to think I had witnessed all. 



4o8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Bells over the water, the lap of waves, the smell of seaweed. 
How soft and elevated and ethereal voices sound at this time. 
An Italian sailor, sitting on the grass looking out over it all, has 
his arms about his girl. 

It would be easy to give an order for ten thousand lovely views 
of Venice, and get them. 



CHAPTER XLI 

VENICE 

ASIDE from the cathedral of St. Mark's, the 
Doge's Palace and the Academy or Venetian 
. gallery of old masters, I could find little of 
artistic significance in Venice — little aside from the 
wonderful spectacle of the city as a whole. As a 
spectacle, viewed across the open space of water, known 
as the Lagoon, the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore 
and Santa Maria della Salute with their domes and 
campaniles strangely transfigured by light and air, are 
beautiful. Close at hand, for me, they lost much ro- 
mance which distance gave them, though the mere space 
of their interiors was impressive. The art, according 
to my judgment, was bad and in the main I noticed that 
my guide books agreed with me — spiritless religious 
representations which, after the Sistine Chapel in Rome 
and such pictures as those of Michelangelo's " Holy 
Family " and Botticelli's " Adoration of the Magi " in 
the Uffizi at Florence, were without import. I pre- 
ferred to speculate on the fear of the plague which had 
produced the Salute and the discovery of the body of 
St. Stephen, the martyr, which had given rise to San 
Giorgio, for it was interesting to think, with these facts 
before me, how art and spectacle in life so often take 
their rise from silly, almost pointless causes and a plain 
lie is more often the foundation of a great institution 
than a truth. Santa Maria did n't save the citizens of 
Venice from the plague in 1630, and in mo the Doge 
Ordelafo Faliero did not bring back the true body of 
St. Stephen from Palestine, although he may have 

409 



4IO A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

thought he did, — at least there are other "true bodies." 
But the old, silly progress of illusion, vanity, politics and 
the like has produced these and other institutions 
throughout the world and will continue to do so, no 
doubt, until time shall be no more. It was interesting 
to me to see the once large and really beautiful Domini- 
can monastery surrounding San Giorgio turned into 
barracks and offices for government officials. I do not 
see why these churches should not be turned into li- 
braries or galleries. Their religious import is quite gone. 

In Venice it was, I think, that I got a little sick of 
churches and second- and third-rate art. The city itself 
is so beautiful, exteriorly speaking, that only the great- 
est art could be tolerated here, yet aside from the Acad- 
emy, which is crowded with canvases by Bellini, Tinto- 
retto, Titian, Veronese and others of the Venetian school, 
and the Ducal Palace, largely decorated by Tintoretto 
and Veronese, there is nothing, save of course St. 
Mark's. Outside of that and the churches of the 
Salute and San Giorgio, — both bad, artistically, I think, 
— there are thirty-three or thirty-four other churches 
all with bits of something which gets them into the cata- 
logues, a Titian, a Tintoretto, a Giorgione or a Paolo 
Veronese, until the soul wearies and you say to your- 
self — " Well, I 've had about enough of this — what 
is the use ? " 

There is no use. Unless you are tracing the rise of 
religious art, or trying to visit the tombs of semi-cele- 
brated persons, or following out the work of some one 
man or group of men to the last fragment you might as 
well desist. There Is nothing in it. I sought church 
after church, entering dark, pleasant, but not often im- 
posing, interiors only to find a single religious repre- 
sentation of one kind or another hardly worth the trouble. 
In the Frarl I found Titian's famous Madonna of the 



VENICE 411 

Pescaro family and a pretentious mausoleum commem- 
orating Canova, and in Santa Maria Formosa Palma 
Vecchio's St. Barbara and four other saints, which ap- 
pealed to me very much, but in the main I was disap- 
pointed and made dreary. After St. Peter's, the Vatican, 
St. Paul's Without the Walls in Rome, the cathedrals at 
Pisa and elsewhere, and the great galleries of Florence, 
Venice seemed to me artistically dull. I preferred always 
to get out into the streets again to see the small shops, to 
encounter the winding canals, to cross the little bridges 
and to feel that here was something new and different, 
far different and more artistic than anything which any 
church or museum could show. 

One of the strangest things about Venice to me was 
the curious manner in which you could always track a 
great public square or market place of some kind by 
following some thin trickling of people you would find 
making their way in a given direction. Suddenly in 
some quite silent residence section, with all its lovely 
waterways about you, you would encounter a small thin 
stream of people going somewhere, perhaps five or six 
in a row, over bridges, up narrow alleys, over more 
bridges, through squares or triangles past churches or 
small stores and constantly swelling in volume until you 
found yourself in the midst of a small throng turning 
now right, now left, when suddenly you came out on the 
great open market place or piazza to which they were all 
tending. They always struck me as a sheep-like com- 
pany, these Venetians, very mild, very soft, pattering here 
and there with vague, almost sad eyes. Here in Venice 
I saw no newspapers displayed at all, nor ever heard 
any called, nor saw any read. There was none of that 
morning vigor which characterizes an American city. 
It was always more like a quiet village scene to me than 
any aspect of a fair-sized city. Yet because I was 



412 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

comfortable in Venice and because all the while I was 
there it was so radiantly beautiful, I left it with real 
sorrow. To me it was perfect. 

The one remaining city of Italy that I was yet to see, 
Milan, because already I had seen so much of Italy and 
because I was eager to get into Switzerland and Ger- 
many, was of small interest to me. It was a long, tedi- 
ous ride to Milan, and I spent my one day there rambling 
about without enthusiasm. Outside of a half-dozen 
early Christian basilicas, which I sedulously avoided (I 
employed a guide), there was only the cathedral, the 
now dismantled palace and fortress of the Sforzas mas- 
querading as a museum and the local art gallery, an im- 
posing affair crowded with that same religious art work 
of the Renaissance which, one might almost say in the 
language of the Milwaukee brewer, had made Italy fa- 
mous. I was, however, about fed up on art. As a 
cathedral that of Milan seemed as imposing as any, great 
and wonderful. I was properly impressed with its im- 
mense stained-glass windows, said to be the largest in 
the world, its fifty-two columns supporting its great 
roof, its ninety-eight pinnacles and two thousand statues. 
Of a splendid edifice such as this there is really nothing 
to say — it is like Amiens, Rouen, and Canterbury — 
simply astounding. It would be useless to attempt to 
describe the emotions it provoked, as useless as to indi- 
cate the feelings some of the pictures in the local gal- 
lery aroused in me. It would be Amiens all over again, 
or some of the pictures in the Uffizi. It seemed to me 
the newest of all the Gothic cathedrals I saw, absolutely 
preserved in all its details and as recently erected as yes- 
terday, yet it was begun in 1386. 

The wonder of this and of every other cathedral like 
it that I saw, to me, was never their religious but their 



VENICE 413 

artistic significance. Some one with a splendid imagi- 
nation must always have been behind each one — and I 
can never understand the character or the temper of an 
age or a people that will let anything happen to them. 

But if I found little of thrilling artistic significance 
after Rome and the south I was strangely impressed 
with the modernity of Milan. Europe, to me, is not 
so old in its texture anywhere as one would suppose. 
Most European cities of large size are of recent growth, 
just as American cities are. So many of the great build- 
ings that we think of as time-worn, such as the Ducal 
Palace at Venice, and elsewhere, are in an excellent state 
of preservation — quite new looking. Venice has many 
new buildings in the old style. Rome is largely com- 
posed of modern tenements and apartment houses. There 
are elevators in Perugia, and when you reach Milan you 
find it newer than St. Louis or Cleveland. If there is 
any medieval spirit anywhere remaining in Milan I could 
not find it. The shops are bright and attractive. There 
are large department stores, and the honk-honk of the 
automobile is quite as common here as anywhere. It 
has only five hundred thousand population, but, even so, 
it evidences great commercial force. If you ride out in 
the suburbs, as I did, you see new houses, new factories, 
new streets, new everything. Unlike the inhabitants of 
southern Italy, the people are large physically and I did 
not understand this until I learned that they are freely 
mingled with the Germans. The Germans are here in 
force, in control of the silk mills, the leather manufac- 
tories, the restaurants, the hotels, the book stores and 
printing establishments. It is a wonder to me that they 
are not in control of the Opera House and the musical 
activities, and I have no doubt that they influence it 
greatly. The director of La Scala ought to be a Ger- 
man, if he is not. I got a first suggestion of Paris in the 



414 A TRAVELER AT FORTY . || 

tables set before the cafes in the Arcade of Vittorio 
Emanuele and had my first taste of Germany in the 
purely German beer-halls with their orchestras of men _ 
or women, where for a few cents expended for beer you f I 
can sit by the hour and listen to the music. In the hotel 
where I stopped the German precision of regulation was 
as marked as anywhere in Germany. It caused me to 
wonder whether the Germans would eventually sweep 
down and possess Italy and, if they did, what they would 
make of it or what Italy would make of them. 



CHAPTER XLII 

LUCERNE 

I ENTERED Switzerland at Chiasso, a little way 
from Lake Como in Italy, and left it at Basle 
near the German frontier, and all I saw was 
mountains — mountains — mountains — some capped 
with snow and some without, tall, sharp, craggy peaks, 
and rough, sharp declivities, with here and there a 
patch of grass, here and there a deep valley, here and 
there a lonely, wide-roofed, slab-built house with those 
immense projecting eaves first made familiar to me by the 
shabby adaptations which constitute our " L " stations in 
New York. The landscape hardens perceptibly a little 
way out of Milan. High slopes and deep lakes appear. 
At Chiasso, the first stop in Switzerland, I handed the 
guard a half-dozen letters I had written in Milan and 
stamped with Italian stamps. I did not know until I 
did this that we were out of Italy, had already changed 
guards and that a new crew — Swiss — w^as in charge 
of the train. " Monsieur," he said, tapping the stamp 
significantly, "vous etes en Suisee." I do not under- 
stand French, but I did comprehend that, and I per- 
ceived also that I was talking to a Swiss. All the peo- 
ple on the- platform were " Schweitzers " as the Ger- 
mans call them, fair, chunky, stolid-looking souls with- 
out a touch of that fire or darkness so generally pres- 
ent a "few miles south. Why should a distance of ten 
miles, five miles, make such an astonishing change? It 
is one of the strangest experiences of travel, to cross an 
imaginary boundary-line and find everything different; 

41S 



4i6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

people, dress, architecture, landscape, often soil and 
foliage. It proves that countries are not merely soil and 
climatic conditions but that there is something more — 
a race stock which is not absolutely a product of the soil 
and which refuses to yield entirely tO' climate. Races 
like animals have an origin above soil and do hold their 
own in spite of changed or changing climatic conditions. 
Cross any boundary you like from one country into an- 
other and judge for yourself. 

Now that I was started, really out of Italy, I was 
ready for any change, the more marked the better; and 
here was one. Switzerland is about as much like Italy 
as a rock is like a bouquet of flowers — a sharp-edged 
rock and a rich colorful, odorous bouquet. And yet, in 
spite of all its chill, bare bleakness, its high ridges and 
small shut-in valleys, it has beauty, cold but real. As 
the train sped on toward Lucerne I kept my face glued 
to the window-pane on one side or the other, standing 
most of the time in the corridor, and was rewarded con- 
stantly by a magnificent panorama. Such bleak, sharp 
crags as stood always above us, such cold, white fields of 
snow! Sometimes the latter stretched down toward us 
in long deep canons or ravines until they disappeared as 
thin white streaks at the bottom. I saw no birds of any 
kind flying; no gardens nor patches of flowers anywhere, 
only brown or gray or white chalets with heavy over- 
hanging eaves and an occasional stocky, pale-skinned 
citizen in a short jacket, knee trousers, small round hat 
and flamboyant waistcoat. I wondered whether I was 
really seeing the national costume. I was. I saw more 
of it at Lucerne, that most hotelly of cities, and in the 
mountains and valleys of the territory beyond it — to- 
ward Basle. Somebody once said of God that he might 
love all the creatures he had made but he certainly 
could n't admire them. I will reverse that for Switzer- 



LUCERNE 417 

land. I might always admire its wonders but I could 
never love them. 

And yet after hours and hours of just this twisting 
and turning up slope and down valley, when I reached 
Lucerne I thought it was utterly beautiful. Long be- 
fore we reached there the lake appeared and we followed 
its shores, whirling in and out of tunnels and along 
splendid slopes. Arrived at Lucerne, I came out into 
the piazza which spreads before the station to the very 
edge of the lake. I was instantly glad that I had in- 
cluded Lucerne in my itinerary. It was evening and 
the lamps in the village (it is not a large city) were al- 
ready sparkling and the water of the lake not only re- 
flected the glow of the lamps along its shores but the 
pale pinks and mauves over the tops of the peaks in the 
west. There was snow on the upper stretches of the 
mountains but down here in this narrow valley filled 
with quaint houses, hotels, churches and modern apart- 
ments, all was balmy and pleasant, — not at all cold. 
My belongings were bundled into the attendant 'bus and 
I was rattled off to one of the best hotels I saw abroad 
— the National — of the Ritz-Carlton system ; very quiet, 
very ornate, and with all those conveniences and com- 
forts which the American has learned to expect, plus a 
European standard of service and politeness of which 
we can as yet know nothing in America. 

I am afraid I have an insatiable appetite for natural 
beauty. I am entertained by character, thrilled by art, 
but of all the enlarging spiritual influences the natural 
panorama is to me the most important. This night, 
after my first day of rambling about Lucerne, I sat out 
on my hotel balcony, overlooking the lake and studied 
the dim moonlit outlines of the peaks crowding about it, 
the star-shine reflected in the water, the still distances 
and the moon sinking over the peaks to the west of the 



4i8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

quaint city. Art has no method of including, or suggest- 
ing even, these vast sidereal spaces. The wonder of the 
night and moonlight is scarcely for the painter's brush. 
It belongs in verse, the drama, great literary pageants 
such as those of Balzac, Turgenieff and Flaubert, but 
not in pictures. The human eye can see so much and 
the human heart responds so swiftly that it is only by 
suggestion that anything is achieved in art. Art cannot 
give you the night in all its fullness save as, by sugges- 
tion, it brings back the wonder of the reality which you 
have already felt and seen. 

I think perhaps of the two impressions that I retained 
most distinctly of Lucerne, that of the evening and of 
the morning, the morning was best. I came out on my 
balcon}^ at dawn, the first morning after I arrived, when 
the lake was lying below me in glassy, olive-black still- 
ness. Up the bank to my left were trees, granite slopes, 
a small chalet built out over the water, its spiles standing 
in the still lake in a soothing, restful way. To my right, 
at the foot of the lake, lay Lucerne, its quaint outlines 
but vaguely apparent in the shadow. Across the lake 
only a little space were small boats, a dock, a church, 
and beyond them, in a circle, gray-black peaks. At their 
extreme summits along a rough, horny skyline were the 
suggestions of an electric dawn, a pale, steely gray 
brightening from dark into light. 

It was not cold at Lucerne, though it was as yet only 
early March. The air was as soft and balmy as at 
Venice. As I sat there the mountain skyline brightened 
first to a faint pink, the snow on the ridges took on a 
lavender and bluish hue as at evening, the green of the 
lower slopes became softly visible and the water began 
to reflect the light of the sk}^, the shadow of the banks, 
the little boats, and even some wild ducks flying 
over its surface, — ducks coming from what bleak, 






LUCERNE 419 

drear spaces I could only guess. Presently I saw a man 
come out from a hotel, enter a small canoe and paddle 
away in the direction of the upper lake. No other living 
thing appeared until the sky had changed from pink to 
blue, the water to a rich silvery gray, the green to a 
translucent green and the rays of the sun came finally 
glistering over the peaks. Then the rough notches and 
gaps of the mountains — gray where blown clear of 
snow, or white where filled with it — took on a sharp, 
brilliant roughness. You could see the cold peaks 
outlined clearly in the water, and the little steeples 
of the churches. My wild ducks were still paddling 
briskly about. I noticed that a particular pair found 
great difficulty in finding the exact spot to suit them. 
With a restless quank, quank, quank, they would rise and 
fly a space only to light with a soft splatter and quack 
cheerfully. When they saw the lone rower returning 
they followed him, coming up close to the hotel dock and 
paddling smartly in his vicinity. I watched him fasten 
his boat and contemplate the ducks. After he had gone 
away I wondered if they were pets of his. Then the 
day having clearly come, I went inside. 

By ten o'clock all Lucerne seemed to have come 
out to promenade along the smooth walks that border 
the shore. Pretty church-bells in severe, conical towers 
began to ring and students in small, dark, tambourine- 
like hats, jackets, tight trousers, and carrying little canes 
about the size of batons, began to walk smartly up and 
down. There were a few travelers present, wintering 
here, no doubt, — English and Americans presenting their 
usual severe, intellectual, inquiring and self -protective 
dispositions. They stood out in sharp contrast to the 
native Swiss, — a fair, stolid, quiescent people. The 
town itself by day I found to be as clean, spruce and or- 
derly as a private pine forest. I never saw a more spick 



420 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and span place, not even in ge-washed and ge-brushed 
Germany. 

This being Sunday and wonderfully fair, I decided to 
take the trip up the lake on one of the two small steam- 
ers that I saw anchored at apparently rival docks. They 
may have served boats plying on different arms of the lake. 
On this trip I fell in with a certain " Major Y. Myata, 
M.D., Surgeon, Imperial Japanese Army " as his card 
read, who, I soon learned, was doing Europe much as 
I was, only entirely alone. I first saw him as he bought 
his ticket on board the steamer at Lucerne, — a small, 
cjuiet, wiry man, very keen and observant, who ad- 
dressed the purser in English first and later in German. 
He came on the top deck into the first-class section, a 
fair-sized camera slung over his shoulder, ' a notebook 
sticking out of the pocket, and finding a seat, very care- 
fully dusted his small feet with the extreme corners of 
his military overcoat, and rubbed his thin, horse-hairy 
mustache with a small, claw-like hand. He looked about 
in a quiet way and began after the boat started to take 
pictures and make copious notes. He had small, piercing, 
bird-like eyes and a strangely unconscious-seeming man- 
ner which was in reality anything but unconscious. We 
fell to talking of Switzerland, Germany and Italy, where 
he had been, and by degrees I learned the route of his 
trip, or what he chose to tell me of it, and his opinions 
concerning Europe and the Far East — as much as he 
chose to communicate. 

It appeared that before coming to Europe this time 
he had made but one other trip out of Japan, namely to 
California, where he had spent a year. He had left 
Japan in October, sailed direct for London and reached 
it in November; had already been through Holland and 
Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and was bound for 
Munich and Hungary and, not strange to relate, Russia. 



I 



LUCERNE 421 

He was coming to America — New York particularly, 
and was eager to know of a good hotel. I mentioned 
twenty. He spoke English, French, Italian and Ger- 
man, although he had never before been anywhere except 
to California. I knew he spoke German, for I talked to 
him in that language and after finding that he could 
speak it better than I could I took his word for the rest. 
We lunched together. I mentioned the little I knew of 
the Japanese in New York. He brightened consider- 
ably. We compared travel notes — Italy, France, Eng- 
land. " I do not like the Italians," he observed in one 
place. " I think they are tricky. They do not tell the 
truth." 

" They probably held up your baggage at the station." 

" They did more than that to me. I could never de- 
pend on them." 

" How do you like the Germans? " I asked him. 

" A very wonderful people. Very civil I thought. 
The Rhine is beautiful." 

I had to smile when I learned that he had done the 
night cafes of Paris, had contrasted English and French 
farce as represented by the Empire and the Folies-Ber- 
gere, and knew all about the Post Impressionists and the 
Futurists or Cubists. The latter he did not understand. 
" It is possible," he said in his strange, sing-songy way, 
"that they represent some motives of constructive sub- 
conscious mind with which we are not any of us familiar 
yet. Electricity came to man in some such way as that. 
I do not know. I do not pretend to understand it." 

At the extreme upper end of Lucerne where the boat 
stopped, we decided to get out and take the train back. 
He was curious to see the shrine or tomb of William 
Tell which was listed as being near here, but when he 
learned that it was two or three miles and that we 
would miss a fast train, he was willing to give it up. 



422 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

With a strange, old-world wisdom he commented on the 
political organization of Switzerland, saying that it 
struck him as strange that these Alpine fastnesses should 
ever have achieved an identity of their own. " They 
have always been separate communities until quite re- 
cently," he said, " and I think that perhaps only rail- 
roads, tunnels, telegraph and telephone have made their 
complete union satisfactory now." 

I marveled at the wisdom of this Oriental as I do at 
so many of them. They are so intensely matter-of-fact 
and practical. Their industry is uncanny. This man 
talked to me of Alpine botany as contrasted with that of 
some of the mountain regions of Japan and then we 
talked of Lincoln, Grant, Washington, Li Hung Chang 
and Richard Wagner. He suggested quite simply that it 
was probable that Germany's only artistic outlet was 
music. 

I was glad to have the company of Major Myata 
for dinner that same evening, for nothing could have 
been duller than the very charming Louis Quinze din- 
ing-room filled with utterly conventional American and 
English visitors. Small, soldierly, erect, he made quite an 
impression as he entered with me. The Major had been 
in two battles of the Russian- Japanese War and had 
witnessed an attack somewhere one night after midnight 
in a snowstorm. Here at table as he proceeded to ex- 
plain in his quiet way, by means of knives and forks, the 
arrangement of the lines and means of caring for the 
wounded, I saw the various diners studying him. He 
was a very forceful-looking person. Very. He told me 
of the manner in which the sanitary and surgical equip- 
ment and control of the Japanese army had been com- 
pletely revolutionized since the date of the Japanese- 
Russian War and that now all the present equipment was 
new. " The great things in our army to-day," he ob- 



LUCERNE 423 

served very quietly at one point, " are artillery and san- 
itation." A fine combination! He left me at midnight, 
after several hours in various cafes. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

ENTERING GERMANY 



I 



F a preliminary glance at Switzerland suggested to 
me a high individuality, primarily Teutonic but sec- 
ondarily national and distinctive, all I saw after- 
wards in Germany and Holland with which I contrasted 
it, confirmed my first impression. I believe that the Swiss, 
for all that they speak the German language and have an 
architecture that certainly has much in common with that 
of medieval Germany, are yet of markedly diverging 
character. They struck me in the main as colder, more 
taciturn, more introspective and less flamboyant than the 
Germans. The rank and file, in so far as I could see, 
were extremely sparing, saving, reserved. They re- 
minded me more of such Austrians and Tyrolians as I 
have known, than of Germans. They were thinner, 
livelier in their actions, not so lusty nor yet so aggressive. 
The new architecture which I saw between Lucerne and 
the German frontier reminded me of much of that which 
one sees in northern Ohio and Indiana and southern 
Michigan. There are still traces of the over-elaborate 
curlicue type of structure and decoration so interest- 
ing as being representative of medieval Teutonic life, 
but not much. The new manufacturing towns were 
very clean and spruce with modern factory buildings of 
the latest almost-all-glass type; and churches and public 
buildings, obviously an improvement or an attempt at 
improvement on older Swiss and Teutonic ideals, were 
everywhere apparent. Lucerne itself is divided into an 
old section, honored and preserved for its historic and 
commercial value, as being attractive to travelers ; a new 

4^4 



1 



ENTERING GERMANY 425 

section, crowded with stores, tenements and apartments 
of the latest German and American type ; and a hotel 
section, filled with large Anglicized and Parisianized 
structures, esplanades, small lounging squares and the hke. 
I never bothered to look at Thorwaldsen's famous lion. 
One look at a photograph years ago alienated me for- 
ever. 

I had an interesting final talk on the morning of 
my departure from Lucerne with the resident manager 
of the hotel who was only one of many employees of a 
company that controlled, so he told me, hotels in Berlin, 
Frankfort, Paris, Rome and London. He had formerly 
been resident manager of a hotel in Frankfort, the one 
to which I was going, and said that he might be trans- 
ferred any time to some other one. He was the man, 
as I learned, whom I had seen rowing on the lake the 
first morning I sat out on my balcony — the one whom 
the wild ducks followed. 

" I saw you," I said as I paid my bill, " out rowing 
on the lake the other morning. I should say that was 
pleasant exercise." 

" I always do it," he said very cheerfully. He was 
a tall, pale, meditative man with a smooth, longish, waxen 
countenance and very dark hair. He was the last word 
as to toilet and courtesy. " I am glad to have the 
chance. I love nature." 

" Are those wild ducks I see on the lake flying about ? " 

" Oh, yes. We have lots of them. They are not 
allowed to be shot. That 's why they come here. We 
have gulls, too. There is a whole flock of gulls that 
comes here every winter. I feed them right out here 
at the dock every day." 

" Why, where can they come from ? " I asked. " This 
is a long way from the sea." 

" I know it," he replied. " It is strange. They come 



426 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

over the Alps from the Mediterranean I suppose. You 
will see them on the Rhine, too, if you go there. I don't 
know. They come though. Sometimes they leave for 
four or five days or a week, but they always come back. 
The captain of the steamer tells me he thinks they go 
to some other lake. They know me though. When 
they come back in the fall and I go out to feed them 
they make a great fuss." 

"They are the same gulls, then?" 

" The very same." 

I had to smile. 

" Those two ducks are great friends of mine, too," 
he went on, referring to the two I had seen following 
him. " They always come up to the dock when I come 
out and when I come back from my row they come again. 
Oh, they make a great clatter." 

He looked at me and smiled in a pleased way. 

The train which I boarded at Lucerne was a through 
express from Milan to Frankfort with special cars for 
Paris and Berlin. It was crowded with Germans of a 
ruddy, solid variety, radiating health, warmth, assurance, 
defiance. I never saw a more marked contrast than ex- 
isted between these travelers on the train and the local 
Swiss outside. The latter seemed much paler and less 
forceful by contrast, though not less intellectual and cer- 
tainly more refined. 

One stout, German lady, with something like eighteen 
packages, had made a veritable express room of her 
second-class compartment. The average traveler, en- 
titled to a seat beside her, would take one look at her de- 
fenses and pass on. She was barricaded beyond any 
hope of successful attack. 

I watched interestedly to see how the character of 
the people, soil and climate would change as we crossed 



ENTERING GERMANY 427 

the frontier into Germany. Every other country I had 
entered had presented a great contrast to the last. After 
passing fifteen or twenty Swiss towns and small cities, 
perhaps more, we finally reached Basle and there the 
crew was changed. I did not know it, being busy think- 
ing of other things, until an immense, rotund, guttural- 
voiced conductor appeared at the door and wanted to 
know if I was bound for Frankfort. I looked out. 
It was just as I expected: another world and another 
atmosphere had been substituted for that of Switzer- 
land. Already the cars and depot platforms were differ- 
ent, heavier I thought, more pretentious. Heavy Ger- 
man porters (packtrager) were in evidence. The cars, 
the vast majority of them here, bore the label of Imperial 
Germany — the wide-winged, black eagle with the 
crown above it, painted against a pinkish-white back- 
ground, with the inscription " Kaiserlicher Deutsche 
Post." A station-master, erect as a soldier, very large, 
with splendiferous parted whiskers, arrayed in a blue uni- 
form and cap, regulated the departure of trains. The 
" Uscita " and " Entrata " of Italy here became " Ein- 
gang " and " Ausgang," and the " Bagaglia " of every 
Italian station was here " Gepack." The endless German 
" Verboten," and " Es ist untersagt " also came into 
evidence. We rolled out into a wide, open, flat, moun- 
tainless plain with only the thin poplars of France in 
evidence and no waterways of any kind, and then I knew 
that Switzerland was truly no more. 

If you want to see how the lesser Teutonic countries 
vary from this greater one, the dominant German Empire, 
pass this way from Switzerland into Germany, or from 
Germany into Holland. At Basle, as I have said, 
we left the mountains for once and for all. I 
saw but few frozen peaks after Lucerne. As we ap- 
proached Basle they seemed to grow less and less 



428 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

and beyond that we entered a flat plain, as flat as Kansas 
and as arable as the Mississippi Valley, which stretched 
unbroken from Basle to Frankfort and from Frankfort 
to Berlin. Judging from what I saw the major part of 
Germany is a vast prairie, as flat as a pancake and as 
thickly strewn with orderly, new, bright forceful towns 
as England is with quaint ones. 

However, now that I was here, I observed that 
it was just these qualities which make Germany pow- 
erful and the others weak. Such thoroughness, such 
force, such universal superintendence! Truly it is 
amazing. Once you are across the border, if you are 
at all sensitive to national or individual personalities 
you can feel it, vital, glowing, entirely superior and 
more ominous than that of Switzerland, or Italy, and 
often less pleasant. It is very much like the heat and 
glow of a furnace. Germany is a great forge or work- 
shop. It resounds with the industry of a busy nation; 
it has all the daring and assurance of a successful man; 
it struts, commands, defies, asserts itself at every turn. 
You would not want to witness greater variety of char- 
acter than you could by passing from England through 
France into Germany. After the stolidity and civility 
of the English, and the lightness and spirit of France, 
the blazing force and defiance of the Germans comes 
upon you as almost the most amazing of all. 

In spite of the fact that my father was German and 
that I have known more or less of Germans all my life. 
I cannot say that I admired the personnel of the German 
Empire, the little that I saw of it, half so much as I 
admired some of the things they had apparently achieved. 
All the stations that I saw in Germany were in apple- 
pie order, new, bright, well-ordered. Big blue-lettered 
signs indicated just the things you wanted to know. 






ENTERING GERMANY 429 

The station platforms were exceedingly well built of 
red tile and white stone; the tracks looked as though 
they were laid on solid hardwood ties; the train 
ran as smoothly as if there were no flaws in it 
anywhere and it ran swiftly. I had to smile as 
occasionally on a platform — the train speeding swiftly 
— a straight, upstanding German officer or official, his 
uniform looking like new, his boots polished, his gold 
epaulets and buckles shining as brightly as gold can 
shine, his blond whiskers, red cap, glistening glasses or 
bright monocle, and above all his sharp, clear eyes look- 
ing directly at you, making an almost amazing combina- 
tion of energy, vitality and superiority, came into view 
and disappeared again. It gave you a startling impres- 
sion of the whole of Germany. " Are they all like 
that? " I asked myself. " Is the army really so dashing 
and forceful? " 

As I traveled first to Frankfort, then to Mayence, 
Coblenz and Cologne and again from Cologne to Frank- 
fort and Berlin, and thence out of the country via Hol- 
land, the wonder grew. I should say now that if Ger- 
many has any number of defects of temperament, and it 
truly has from almost any American point of view, it 
has virtues and capacities so noteworthy, admirable and 
advantageous that the whole world may well sit up and 
take notice. The one thing that came home to me with 
great force was that Germany is in no way loose jointed 
or idle but, on the contrary, strong, red-blooded, avid, 
imaginative. Germany is a terrific nation, hopeful, 
courageous, enthusiastic, orderly, self-disciplining, at 
present anyhow, and if it can keep its pace without en- 
gaging in some vast, self-destroying conflict, it can be- 
come internally so powerful that it will almost stand 
irresistible. I should say that any nation that to-day 



430 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

chose to pick a quarrel with Germany on her home ground 
would be foolish in the extreme. It is the beau ideal of 
the aggressive, militant, orderly spirit and, if it w'ere 
properly captained and the gods were kind, it would 
be everywhere invincible. 

When I entered Germany it was with just two definite 
things in mind. One was to seek out my father's birth- 
place, a little hamlet, as I understood it, called Mayen, 
located somewhere between the Moselle and the Rhine at 
Coblenz, — the region where the Moselle wines come 
from. The other was to visit Berlin and see what Ger- 
many's foremost city was really like and to get a look at 
the Kaiser if possible. In both of these I was quickly 
successful, though after I reached Frankfort some other 
things transpired which w^ere not on the program. 

Frankfort was a disappointment to me at first. It was 
a city of over four hundred thousand population, clean, 
vigorous, effective; but I saw it In a rain, to begin with, 
and I did not like It. It was too squat In appearance — 
too unvarying in its lines; it seemed to have no focal 
point such as one finds In all medieval cities. What 
has come over the spirit of city governments, directing 
architects, and Individual enterprise? Is there no one 
who wants really to do the very exceptional thing? No 
German city I saw had a central heart worthy of the 
name — no Piazza del Campidoglio such as Rome has ; 
no Piazza della Signoria such as Florence has ; no Piazza 
San Marco such as Venice has; not even a cathedral 
center, lovely thing that it is, such as Milan has. 
Paris with its Gardens of the Tuileries, its Champs-de- 
Mars, its Esplanades des Invalides, and its Arc de 
Triomphe and Place de I'Opera, does so much better in 
this matter than any German city has dreamed of doing. 
Even London has its splendid focal point about the 



ENTERING GERMANY 431 

Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's and the Embank- 
ment, which are worth something. But German cities ! 
Yet they are worthy cities, every one of them, and far 
more vital than those of Italy. 

I should like to relate first, however, the story of the 
vanishing birthplace. Ever since I was three or four 
years old and dandled on my father's knee in our In- 
diana homestead, I had heard more or less of Mayen, 
Coblenz, and the region on the Rhine from which my 
father came. As we all know, the Germans are a sen- 
timental, fatherland-loving race and my father, honest 
German Catholic that he was, was no exception. He 
used to tell me what a lovely place Mayen was, how the 
hills rose about it, how grape-growing was its princi- 
pal industry, how there were castles there and grafs and 
rich burghers, and how there was a wall about the city 
which in his day constituted it an armed fortress, and how 
often as a little child he had been taken out through 
some one of its great gates seated on the saddle of some 
kindly minded cavalryman and galloped about the drill- 
ground. He seems to have become, by the early death 
of his mother and second marriage of his father, a 
rather unwelcome stepchild and, early, to escape being 
draughted for the Prussian army which had seized this 
town — which only a few years before had belonged to 
France, though German enough in character — he had 
secretly decamped to the border with three others and 
so made his way to Paris. Later he came to America, 
made his way by degrees to Indiana, established a 
woolen-mill on the banks of the Wabash at Terre Haute 
and there, after marrying in Ohio, raised his large 
family. His first love was his home town, however, 
and Prussia, which he admired; and to his dying day 
he never ceased talking about it. On more than one 
occasion he told me he would like to go back, just to 



432 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

see how things were, but the Prussian regulations con- 
cerning deserters or those who avoided service were so 
drastic and the Hkelihood of his being recognized so great 
that he was afraid of being seized and at least thrown 
into prison if not shot, so he never ventured it. I fancy 
this danger of arrest and his feeling that he could not 
return cast an additional glamour over the place and the 
region which he could never revisit. Anyhow I was 
anxious to see May en and to discover if the family name 
still persisted there. 

When I consulted with the Cook's agent at Rome he 
had promptly announced, " There is n't any such place as 
Mayen. You 're thinking of Mayence, near Frankfort, 
on the Rhine." 

" No," I said, " I 'm not. I 'm thinking of Mayen — 
M-a-y-e-n. Now you look and see." 

" There is n't any such place, I tell you," he replied 
courteously. " It 's Mayence, not very far from Frank- 
fort." 

" Let me see," I argued, looking at his map. " It 's 
near the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle." 

" Mayence is the place. See, here it is. Here 's the 
Moselle and here 's Mayence." 

I looked, and sure enough they seemed reasonably 
close together. " All right," I said, " give me a ticket to 
Berlin via Mayence." 

" I '11 book you to Frankfort. That 's only thirty 
minutes away. There 's nothing of interest at Mayence 
— not even a good hotel." 

Arrived at Frankfort, I decided not to send my trunks 
to the hotel as yet but to take one light bag, leaving the re- 
mainder " im Gep'dck " and see what I could at Mayence. 
I might want to stay all night, wandering about my 
father's old haunts, and I might want to go down the 
Rhine a httle way — I was not sure. 






ENTERING GERMANY 433 

The Mayence to which I was going was not the Mayen 
that I wanted, but I did not know that. You have heard 
of people weeping over the wrong tombstones. This 
was a case in point. Fortunately I was going in the 
direction of the real Mayen, though I did not know that 
either. I ran through a country which reminded me 
very much of the region in which Terre Haute is located 
and I said to myself quite wisely: "Now I can see 
why my father and so many other Germans from this 
region settled in southern Indiana. It is like their old 
home. The wide, flat fields are the same." 

When we reached Mayence and I had deposited my 
kit-bag, for the time being I strolled out into the prin- 
cipal streets wondering whether I should get the least 
impression of the city or town as it was when my father 
was here as a boy. It is curious and amusing how we 
can delude ourselves at times. Mayence I really knew, 
if I had stopped tO' consider, could not be the Mayen, 
where my father was born. The former was the city of 
that Bishop-Elector Albert of Brandenburg who in need 
of a large sum of money to pay Rome for the privilege 
oi assuming the archbishopric, when he already held 
two other sees, made an arrangement with Pope Leo X — 
the Medici pope who was then trying to raise money to 
rebuild or enlarge St. Peter's — to superintend the sale 
of indulgences in Germany (taking half the proceeds in 
reward for his services) and thus by arousing the ire of 
Luther helped to bring about the Reformation in Ger- 
many. This was the city also of that amiable Dominican 
Prior, John Tetzel, who, once appealing for ready pur- 
chasers for his sacerdotal wares declared : 

" Do you not hear your dead parents crying out * Have 
mercy on us? We are in sore pain and you can set us 
free for a mere pittance. We have borne you, we have 
trained and educated you, we have left you all our prop- 



434 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

erty, and you are so hard-hearted and cruel that you 
leave us to roast in the flames when you could so easily 
release us.' " 

I shall always remember Mayence by that ingenious 
advertisement. My father had described to me a small, 
walled town with frowning castles set down in a valley 
among hills. He had said over and over that it was 
located at the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle. 
I recalled afterward that he told me that the city of 
Coblenz was very near by, but in my brisk effort to 
find this place quickly I had forgotten that. Here I 
was in a region which contained not a glimpse of any hills 
from within the city, the Moselle was all of a hundred 
miles away, and no walls of any medieval stronghold 
were visible anywhere and yet I was reasonably satisfied 
that this was the place. 

" Dear me," I thought, " how Mayence has grown. 
My father would n't know it." (Baedeker gave its pop- 
ulation at one hundred and ten thousand). " How Ger- 
many has grown in the sixty-five years since he was here. 
It used to be a town of three or four thousand. Now 
it is a large city." I read about it assiduously in Bae- 
deker and looked at the rather thriving streets of the 
business heart, trying to visualize it as it should have 
been in 1843. Until midnight I was wandering about 
in the dark and bright streets of Mayence, satisfying 
myself with the thought that I was really seeing the city 
in which my father was born. 

For a city of so much historic import Mayence was 
very dull. It was built after the theories of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with, however, many 
modern improvements. The Cathedral was a botch, 
ornamented with elaborate statues of stuffy bishops and 
electors. The houses were done in many places in that 
heavy scroll fashion common to medieval Germany. 



ENTERING GERMANY 435 

The streets were narrow and winding. I saw an awful 
imitation of our modern Coney Island in the shape of a 
moving circus which was camped on one of the public 
camping places. A dull heavy place, all told. 

Coming into the breakfast-room of my hotel the next 
morning, I encountered a man who looked to me like 
a German traveling salesman. He had brought his grip 
down to the desk and was consuming his morning coffee 
and rolls with great gusto, the while he read his paper. 
I said to him, " Do you know of any place in this part 
of Germany that is called Mayen? — not Mayence." I 
wanted to make sure of my location. 

" Mayen ? Mayen ? " he replied. " Why, yes. I 
think there is such a place near Coblenz. It is n't very 
large." 

" Coblenz ! That 's it," I replied, recalling now 
what my father had told me of Coblenz. " To be sure. 
How far is that?" 

" Oh, that is all of three hours from here. It is at 
the juncture of the Moselle." 

" Do you know how the trains run? " I asked, getting 
up, a feeling of disgusted disappointment spreading over 
me. 

" I think there is one around half-past nine or ten." 

" Damn ! " I said, realizing what a dunce I had been. 
I had just forty-five minutes in which to pay my bill and 
make the train. Three hours more! I could have gone 
on the night before. 

I hurried out, secured my bag, paid my bill and was 
off. On the way I had myself driven to the old " Juden- 
Gasse," said to be full of picturesque medieval houses, 
for a look. I reached the depot in time to have a two- 
minute argument with my driver as to whether he was 
entitled to two marks or one — one being a fair reward 
— and then hurried into my train. In a half hour we 



436 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

were at Bingen-on-the-Rhine, and in three-quarters of an 
hour those lovely hills and ravines which make the Rhine 
so picturesque had begun, and they continued all the way 
to Coblenz and below that to Cologne. 






CHAPTER XLIV 

A MEDIEVAL TOWN 

AFTER Italy and Switzerland the scenery of the 
Rhine seemed very mild and unpretentious to 
me, yet it was very beautiful. The Hudson 
from Albany to New York is far more imposing. A 
score of American rivers such as the Penobscot, the 
New in West Virginia, the James above Lynchburg, the 
Rio Grande, and others would make the Rhine seem 
simple by comparison; yet it has an individuality so 
distinct that it is unforgetable. I always marvel over 
this thing — personality. Nothing under the sun ex- 
plains it. So, often you can say " this is finer," *' that 
is more imposing," " by comparison this is nothing," 
but when you have said all this, the thing with person- 
ality rises up and triumphs. So it is with the Rhine. 
Like millions before me and millions yet to come, I 
watched its slopes, its castles, its islands, its pretty 
little German towns passing in review before the win- 
dows of this excellent train and decided that in its 
way nothing could be finer It had personality. A 
snatch of old wall, with peach trees in blossom; a long 
thin side-wheel steamer, one smokestack fore and another 
aft, labeled "William Egan Gesellschaft " ; a disman- 
tled castle tower, with a flock of crows flying about it 
and hills laid out in ordered squares of vines gave it 
all the charm it needed. 

When Coblenz was reached, I bustled out, ready 
to inspect Mayen at once. Another disappointment. 
Mayen was not at Coblenz but fifteen or eighteen miles 

437 



438 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

away on a small branch road, the trains of which ran 
just four times a day, but I did not learn this until, as 
usual, I had done considerable investigating. According 
to my map May en appeared to be exactly at the junction 
of the Rhine and the Moselle, which was here, but when 
I asked a small boy dancing along a Coblenz street 
where the Moselle was, he informed me, "If you walk 
fast you will get there in half an hour ! " 

When I reached the actual juncture of the Rhine and 
the Moselle, however, I found I was mistaken; I was 
entertained at first by a fine view of the two rivers, 
darkly walled by hills and a very massive and, in a way, 
impressive equestrian statue of Emperor William I, 
armed in the most flamboyant and aggressive military 
manner and looking sternly down on the fast-traveling 
and uniting waters of the two rivers. Idling about the 
base of this monument, to catch sightseers, w^as a young 
picture-post-card seller with a box of views of the Rhine, 
Coblenz, Cologne and other cities, for sale. He was a 
very humble-looking youth, — a bit doleful, — who kept 
following me about until I bought some post-cards. 
" Where is Mayen ? " I asked, as I began to select a few 
pictures of things I had and had not seen, for future 
reference. 

" Mayence?" he asked doubtfully. " Mayence? Oh, 
that is a great way from here. Mayence is up the river 
near Frankfort." 

" No, no," I replied irritably. (This matter was get- 
ting to be a sore point with me.) "I have just come 
from Mayence. I am looking for Mayen. Is n't it 
over there somewhere?" I pointed to the fields over 
the river. 

He shook his head. " Mayen ! " he said. " I don't 
think there is such a place." 

" Good heavens! " I exclaimed, *' what are you talking 



A MEDIEVAL TOWN 439 

about ? Here it is on the map. What is that ? Do you 
live here in Coblenz?" 

" Gewiss ! " he replied. " I live here." 

" Very good, then. Where is Mayen? " 

" I have never heard of it," he replied. 

"My God!" I exclaimed to myself, "perhaps it was 
destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War. Maybe there 
is n't any Mayen." 

" You have lived here all your life," I said, turning 
to my informant, " and you have never heard of Mayen ? " 

" Mayen, no. Mayence, yes. It is up the river near 
Frankfort." 

" Don't tell me that again ! " I said peevishly, and 
walked off. The elusiveness of my fathers birthplace 
was getting on my nerves. Finally I found a car-line 
which ended at the river and a landing wharf and hailed 
the conductor and motorman who were idling together 
for a moment. 

"Where is Mayen? " I asked. 

"Mayence?" they said, looking at me curiously. 

" No, no'. M-a-y-e-n, Mayen — not Mayence. It 's 
a small town around here somewhere." 

"Mayen! Mayen !" they repeated. "Mayen!" And 
then frowned. 

" Oh, God ! " I sighed. I got out my map. " Mayen 
— see? " I said. 

" Oh, yes," one of them replied brightly, putting up 
a finger. " That is so. There is a place called Mayen ! 
It is out that way. You must take the train." 

" How many miles ? " I asked. 

" About fifteen. It will take you about an hour and 
a half." 

I went back to the station and tound I must wait 
another two hours before my train left. I had reached 
the point where I did n't care a picayune whether I ever 



440 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

got to my father's town or not. Only a dogged deter- 
mination not to be beaten kept me at it. 

It was at Coblenz, while .waiting for my train, that I 
had my first real taste of the German army. Around 
a corner a full regiment suddenly came intO' view. They 
swung past me and crossed a bridge over the Rhine, 
their brass helmets glittering. Their trousers were gray 
and their jackets red, and they marched with a slap, 
slap, slap of their feet that was positively ominous. 
Every man's body was as erect as a poker; every man's 
gun was carried with almost loving grace over his shoul- 
der. They were all big men, stolid and broad-chested. 
As they filed over the bridge, four abreast, they looked, 
at that distance, like a fine scarlet ribbon with a streak 
of gold in it. They eventually disappeared between the 
green hills on the other side. 

In another part of the city I came upon a company of 
perhaps fifty, marching in loose formation and talking 
cheerfully to one another. Behind me, coming toward 
the soldiers, was an officer, one of those band-box gen- 
.tlemen in the long gray, military coat of the Germans, 
the high-crowned, low-visored cap, and lacquered boots. 
I learned before I was out of Germany to listen for the 
clank of their swords. The moment the sergeant in 
charge of the men saw this officer in the distance, he 
gave vent to a low command which brought the men 
four by four instantly. In the next breath their guns, 
previously swinging loosely in their hands, were over 
their shoulders and as the officer drew alongside a sharp 
" Vorwdrts! " produced that wonderful jack-knife motion 
" the goose-step " — each leg brought rigidly to a level 
with the abdomen as they went slap — slap — slapping 
by, until the officer was gone. Then, at a word, they 
fell into their old easy formation again and were human 
beings once more. 



A MEDIEVAL TOWN 441 

It was to me a most vivid glimpse of extreme mili- 
tary efficiency. All the while I was in Germany I never 
saw a lounging soldier. The officers, all men of fine 
stature, were so showily tailored as to leave a sharp 
impression. They walked briskly, smartly, defiantly, 
with a tremendous air of assurance but not of vain- 
glory. They were so superior to anything else in Ger- 
many that for me they made it. But to continue. 

At half -past two my train departed and I entered a 
fourth-class compartment — the only class one could 
book for on this branch' road. They were hard, wooden- 
seated little cars, as stiff and heavy as cars could possibly 
be. My mind was full of my father's ancestral heath 
and the quaint type of life that must have been lived 
here a hundred years before. This was a French border 
country. My father, when he ran away, had escaped 
into Alsace, near by. He told me once of being whipped 
for stealing cherries, because his father's house ad- 
joined the priest's yard and a cherry-tree belonging to 
that holy man had spread its branches, cherry-laden, over 
the walls, and he had secretly feasted upon the fruit 
at night. His stepmother, informed by the priest, 
whipped him. I wondered if I could find that stone wall. 

The train was now running through a very typical 
section of old-time Germany. Solid, healthy men and 
buxom women got leisurely on and off at the various 
small but well-built stations. You could feel distinctly 
a strong note of commercial development here. Some 
small new factory buildings were visible at one place 
and another. An occasional real-estate sign, after the 
American fashion, was in evidence. The fields looked 
well and fully tilled. Hills were always in the distance 
somewhere. 

As the train pulled into one small station, Metternich 
by name, I saw a tall, raw-boned yokel, lounging on the 



442 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

platform. He was a mere boy, nineteen or twenty, six 
feet tall, broad-shouldered, horny-handed, and with as 
vacuous a face as it is possible for an individual to pos- 
sess. A cheap, wide-brimmed, soft hat, O'ffensively new, 
and of a dusty mud color, sat low over one ear; and 
around it, to my astonishment, was twined a slim gar- 
land of flowers and leaves which, interwoven and 
chained, hung ridiculously down his back. He was all 
alone, gazing sheepishly about him and yet doing his 
best to wear his astounding honors with an air of 
bravado. I was looking at his collarless shirt, his big 
feet and hands and his bow legs, when I heard a German 
in the next seat remark to his neighbor, " He won't look 
like that long." 

" Three months — he '11 be fine." 

They went on reading their papers and I fell to won- 
dering what they could mean. 

At the next station were five more yokels, all similarly 
crowned, and around them a bevy of rosy, healthy vil- 
lage girls. These five, constituting at once a crowd and 
a center of attention, were somewhat more assured — 
more swaggering — than the lone youth we had seen. 

" What is that ? " I asked the man over the seat. 
"What are they doing?" 

" They 've been drawn for the army," he replied. 
" All over Germany the young men are being drawn like 
this." 

" Do they begin to serve at once ? " 

" At once." 

I paused in amazement at this trick of statecraft which 
could make of the drawing for so difficult and compul- 
sory a thing as service in the army a gala occasion. For 
scarcely any compensation — a few cents a day — these 
yokels and village men are seized upon and made to do 
almost heroic duty for two years, whether they will or 



A MEDIEVAL TOWN 443 

no. I did not know then, quite, how intensely proud 
Germany is of her army, how perfectly willing the vast 
majority are to serve, how certain the great majority 
of Germans are that Germany is called of God to rule 
— beherrschen is their vigorous word — the world. 
Before I was out of Frankfort and Berlin, I could well 
realize how intensely proud the average boy is to be 
drawn. He is really a man then; he is permitted to 
wear a uniform and carry a gun ; the citizens from then 
on, at least so long as he is in service, respect him as 
a soldier. By good fortune or ability he may become a 
petty officer. So they crown him with flowers, and the 
girls gather round him in admiring groups. What a 
clever custom thus to sugar-coat the compulsory pill. 
And, in a way, what a travesty. 

The climax of my quest was reached when, after 
traveling all this distance and finally reaching the 
" Mayen " on the railroad, I did n't really reach it after 
all ! It proved to be " West Mayen " — a new section 
of the old town — or rather a new rival of it — and 
from West Mayen I had to walk to Mayen proper, or 
what might now be called East Mayen — a distance of 
over a mile. I first shook my head in disgust, and then 
laughed. For there, in the valley below me, after I had 
walked a little way, I could actually see the town my 
father had described, a small walled city of now perhaps 
seven or eight thousand population, with an old Gothic 
church in the center containing a twisted spire, a true 
castle or Schloss of ancient date, on the high ground to 
the right, a towered gate or two, of that medieval conical 
aspect so beloved of the painters of romance, and a clus- 
ter or clutter of quaint, many-gabled, sharp-roofed and 
sharp-pointed houses which speak invariably of days and 
nations and emotions and tastes now almost entirely su- 
perseded. West Mayen was being built in modern style. 



444 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Some coal mines had been discovered there and manu- 
factories were coming in. At Mayen all was quite 
as my father left it, I am sure, some seventy years be- 
fore. 

Those who think this world would be best if we could 
have peace and quiet should visit Mayen. Here is a 
town that has existed in a more or less peaceful state for 
all of six hundred years. The single Catholic church, 
the largest structure outside of the adjacent castle, was 
begun in the twelfth century. Prankish princes and 
Teuton lords have by turns occupied its site. But Mayen 
has remained quite peacefully a small, German, w^alled 
city, doing — in part at least — many of the things its 
ancestors did. Nowhere in Europe, not even in Italy, 
did I feel more keenly the seeming out-of-placeness of 
the modern implements of progress. When, after a 
pause at the local graveyard, in search of ancestral 
Dreisers, I wandered down into the town proper, crossed 
over the ancient stone bridge that gives into an easily 
defended, towered gate, and saw the presence of such 
things as the Singer Sewing Machine Company, a thor- 
oughly up-to-date bookstore, an evening newspaper office 
and a moving-picture show, I shook my head in real de- 
spair. " Nothing is really old," I sighed, " nothing ! " 

Like all the places that were highly individual and 
different, Mayen made a deep impression on me. It 
was like entering the shell of some great mollusc that 
had long since died, to enter this walled town and find it 
occupied by another type of life from that which orig- 
inally existed there. Because it was raining now and 
soon to grow dark, I sauntered into the first shelter I 
saw — a four-story, rather presentable brick inn, lo- 
cated outside the gate known as the Briickentor (bridge- 
gate) and took a room here for the night. It was a dull 



A MEDIEVAL TOWN 445 

affair, run by as absurd a creature as I have ever en- 
countered. He was a little man, sandy-haired, wool- 
witted, inquisitive, idle, in a silly way drunken, who was 
so astonished by the onslaught of a total stranger in this 
unexpected manner that he scarcely knew how to con- 
duct himself. 

" I want a room for the night," I suggested. 

"A room?" he queried, in an astonished way, as if 
this were the most unheard-of thing imaginable. 

" Certainly," I said. " A room. You rent rooms, 
don't you? " 

" Oh, certainly, certainly. To be sure. A room. 
Certainly. Wait. I will call my wife." 

He went into a back chamber, leaving me to face sev- 
eral curious natives who went over me from head to toe 
with their eyes. 

" Mah-ree-ah ! " I heard my landlord calling quite 
loudly in the rear portion oi the house. " There is one 
here who wants a room. Have we a room ready? " 

I heard no reply. 

Presently he came back, however, and said in a high- 
flown, deliberate way, " Be seated. Are you from 
Frankfort? " 

" Yes, and no. I come from America." 

"0-o-oh! America. What part of America?" 

" New York." 

" O-o-oh — New York. That is a great place. I 
have a brother in America. Since six years now he is 
out there. I forget the place." He put his hand to his 
foolish, frizzled head and looked at the floor. 

His wife now appeared, a stout, dull woman, one of 
the hard-working potato specimens of the race. A whis- 
pered conference between them followed, after which 
they announced my room would soon be ready. 

" Let me leave my bag here," I said, anxious to escape, 



446 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" and then I will come back later. I want to look around 
for awhile." 

He accepted this valid excuse and I departed, glad to 
get out into the rain and the strange town, anxious to find 
a better-looking place to eat and to see what I could see. 

My search for dead or living Dreisers, which I have 
purposely skipped in order to introduce the town, led me 
first, as I have said, to the local graveyard — the old 
" Kirchhof." It was lowering to a rain as I entered, and 
the clouds hung in rich black masses over the valley below. 
It was half-after four by my watch. I made up my mind 
that I would examine the inscription of every tombstone 
as quickly as possible, in order to locate all the dead Drei- 
sers, and then get down into the town before the night 
and the rain fell, and locate the live ones — if any. 
With that idea in view I began at an upper row, near the 
church, to work down. Time v/as when the mere wan- 
dering in a graveyard after this fashion would have 
produced the profoundest melancholy in me. It was so 
in Paris; it made me morbidly weary and ineffably sad. 
I saw too many great names — Chopin, Balzac, Daudet, 
Rachel — solemnly chiseled in stone. And I hurried out, 
finally, quite agonized and unspeakably lonely. 

Here in Mayen it was a simpler feeling that was gradu- 
ally coming over me — an amused sentimental interest 
in the simple lives that had had, too often, their begin- 
ning and their end in this little village. It was a 
lovely afternoon for such a search. Spring was al- 
ready here in South Germany, that faint, tentative 
suggestion of budding life; all the wind-blown leaves 
of the preceding fall were on the ground, but in 
between them new grass was springing and, one might 
readily suspect, windflowers and crocuses, the first 
faint green points of lilies and the pulsing tendrils 
of harebells. It was beginning to sprinkle, the faint- 



A MEDIEVAL TOWN 447 

est suggestion of a light rain; and in the west, over 
the roofs and towers of Mayen, a gleam of sun- 
light broke through the mass of heavy clouds and touched 
the valley with one last lingering ray. 

" Hier ruht im Gott" (Here rests in God), or " Hier 
sanft ruht'' (Here softly rests), was too often the be- 
ginning. I had made my way through the sixth or 
seventh row from the top, pushing away grass at times 
from in front of faded inscriptions, rubbing other lichen- 
covered letters clean with a stick and standing interested 
before recent tombstones, all smart with a very re- 
cently developed local idea of setting a black piece of 
glass into the gray of the marble and on that lettering 
the names of the departed in gold ! It was to me a very 
thick-witted, truly Teutonic idea, dull and heavy in its 
mistakenness ; but certainly it was no worse than the 
Italian idea of putting the photograph of the late beloved 
in the head of the slab, behind glass, in a stone-cut frame, 
and of further ornamenting the graves with ghastly iron- 
shafted lamps, with globes of yellow, pink and green 
glass. That was the worst of all. 

As I was rneditating how, oysterlike, little villages re- 
produce themselves from generation to generation, a few 
coming and a few going but the majority leading a nar- 
row simple round of existence, I came suddenly, so it 
seemed to me, upon one grave which gave me a real 
shock. It was a comparatively recent slab of gray gran- 
ite with the modern plate of black glass set in it and a 
Gothic cross surmounting it all at the top. On the glass 
plate was lettered : 

Here Rests 

Theodor Dreiser, 

Born 16 — Feb. — 1820. 

Died 28 — Feb.— 1882. 

R. I. P. 



448 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

I think as clear a notion as I ever had of how my 
grave will look after I am gone and how utterly 
unimportant both life and death are, anyhow, came 
to me then. Something about this old graveyard, the 
suggestion of the new life of spring, a robin trill- 
ing its customary evening song on a near-by twig, 
the smoke curling upward from the chimneys in the 
old houses below, the spire of the medieval church and 
the walls of the medieval castle standing out in the soft- 
ening light — one or all of them served to give me a 
sense of the long past that is back of every individual in 
the race of life and the long future that the race has 
before it, regardless of the individual. Religion offers 
no consolation to me. Psychic research and metaphysics, 
however meditated upon, are in vain. There is in my 
judgment no death; the universe is composed of life; 
but, nevertheless, I cannot see any continuous life for 
any individual. And it would be so unimportant if true. 
Imagine an eternity of life for a leaf, a fish-worm, an 
oyster! The best that can be said is that ideas of 
types survive somewhere in the creative consciousness. 
That is all. The rest is silence. 

Besides this, there were the graves of my father's 
brother John, and some other Dreisers; but none of them 
dated earlier than 1800. 






CHAPTER XLV 

MY father's birthplace 

IT was quite dark when I finally came across a sort 
of tap-room " restaurant " whose quaint atmosphere 
charmed me. The usual pewter plates and tankards 
adorned the dull red and brown walls. A line of 
leather-covered seats followed the walls, in front of 
which were ranged long tables. 

My arrival here with a quiet request for food put a 
sort of panic into the breast of my small but stout host, 
who, when I came in, was playing checkers with another 
middle-aged Mayener, but who, when I asked for food, 
gave over his pleasure for the time being and bustled out 
to find his wife. He looked not a little like a fat sparrow. 

" Why, yes, yes," he remarked briskly, " what will 
you have? " 

"What can I have?" 

On the instant he put his little fat hand to his semi- 
bald pate and rubbed it ruminatively. " A steak, per- 
haps. Some veal ? Some sausage ? " 

" I will have a steak if you don't mind, and a cup of 
black coffee." 

He bustled out and when he came back I threw a new 
bomb into camp. " May I wash my hands ? " 

" Certainly, certainly," he replied, " in a minute." 
And he bounded upstairs. " Katrina ! Katrina ! 
Katrina! " I heard him call, " have Anna make the wash- 
room ready. He wishes to wash his hands. Where are 
the towels ? Where is the soap ? 

There was much clattering of feet overhead. I heard 
a door being opened and things being moved. Presently 

449 



450 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

I heard him call, " Katrina, in God's name, where is the 
soap ! " More clattering of feet, and finally he came 
down, red and puffing. " Now, mein Herr, you can go 
up." 

I went, concealing a secret grin, and found that I had 
dislocated a store-room, once a bath perhaps ; that a baby- 
carriage had been removed from a table and on it pitcher, 
bowl, towel, and soap had been placed — a small piece 
of soap, and cold water. Finally, after seeing me served 
properly, he sat down at his table again and sighed. The 
neighbor returned. Several more citizens dropped in to 
read and chat. The two youngest boys in the family 
came downstairs with their books to study. It was quite 
a typical German family scene. 

It was here that I made my first effort to learn some- 
thing about the Dreiser family. " Do you know any one 
by the name of Dreiser, hereabouts? " I asked cautiously, 
afraid to talk too much for fear of incriminating myself. 

" Dreiser, Dreiser? " he said. " Is he in the furniture 
business? " 

" I don't know. That is what I should like to find out. 
Do you know of any one by that name? " 

" Is n't that the man, Henry," — he turned to one of 
his guests — " who failed here last year for fifty thou- 
sand marks? " 

" The same," said this other, solemnly (I fancied 
rather feelingly). 

" Goodness, gracious ! " I thought. " This is the end. 
If he failed for fifty thousand marks in Germany he is in 
disgrace. To think a Dreiser should ever have had fifty 
thousand marks ! Would that I had known him in his 
palmy days." 

" There was a John Dreiser here," my host said to me, 
" who failed for fifty thousand marks. He is gone, 
though, now, I think. I don't know where he is." 



MY FATHER'S BIRTHPLACE 451 

It was not an auspicious beginning, and under the cir- 
cumstances I thought it as well not to identify myself 
with this Dreiser too closely. I finished my meal and 
went out, wondering how, if at all, I was to secure any 
additional information. The rain had ceased and the 
sky was already clearing. It promised to be fine on the 
morrow. After more idle rambling through a world that 
was quite as old as Canterbury I came back finally to my 
hotel. My host was up and waiting for me. All but one 
guest had gone. 

'' So you are from America," he observed. " I would 
like very much to talk with you some more." 

" Let me ask you something," I replied. " Do you 
know any one here in Mayen by the name of Dreiser? " 

" Dreiser — Dreiser ? It seems to me there was some 
one here. He failed for a lot of money. You could 
find out at the Mayener Zeitung. Mr. Schroeder ought 
to know." 

I decided that I would appeal to Mr. Schroeder and 
his paper in the morning ; and pretending to be very tired, 
in order to escape my host, who by now was a little tipsy, 
I went to the room assigned me, carrying a candle. 
That night I slept soundly, under an immense, stuffy 
feather-bed. 

The next morning at dawn I arose and was rewarded 
with the only truly satisfying medieval prospect I have 
ever seen in my life. It was strange, remote, Teutonic, 
Burgundian. The " grafs " and " burghers " of an older 
world might well have been enacting their life under my 
very eyes. Below me in a valley was Mayen, — its quaint 
towers and housetops spread out in the faint morning 
light. It was beautiful. Under my window tumbled 
the little stream that had served as a moat in earlier days 
— a good and natural defense. Opposite me was the 
massive Briickentor. Further on was a heavv circular 



452 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

sweep of wall and a handsome watch-tower. Over the 
wall, rising up a slope, could be seen the peak-roofed, 
gabled houses, of solid brick and stone with slate and tile 
roofs. Never before in my life had I looked on a truly 
medieval city of the castellated, Teutonic order. Noth- 
ing that I had seen in either France, England, or Italy 
had the peculiar quality of this remote spot. I escaped 
the importunities of my talkative host by a ruse, putting 
the two marks charged for the room in an envelope and 
leaving it on the dresser. I went out and followed the 
stream in the pleasant morning light. I mailed post-cards 
at the local post-office to all and sundry of my relatives, 
stating the local condition of the Dreisers, as so far 
learned, and then sought out the office of the Mayener 
Zeitung, where I encountered one Herr Schroeder, but he 
could tell me nothing of any Dreisers save of that un- 
fortunate one who had failed in the furniture business. 
He advised me to seek the curator of the local museum, 
a man who had the history of May en at his finger-tips. 
He was a cabinet-maker by trade. I could not find him 
at home and finally, after looking in the small local direc- 
tory published by Mr. Schroeder and finding no Dreisers 
listed, I decided to give up and go back to Frankfort; 
but not without one last look at the private yard at- 
tached to the priest's house and the cherry-tree which 
had been the cause of the trouncing, and lastly the local 
museum. 

It is curious how the most innocent and idle of senti- 
ments will lead a person on in this way. In the little 
Briickentor Museum, before leaving, I studied with the 
greatest interest — because it was my father's town — 
the ancient Celtic, Teutonic, Roman and Merovingian an- 
tiquities. It was here that I saw for the first time the 
much-talked-of wheat discovered in a Celtic funeral urn, 
which, although thousands of years have elapsed since it 






MY FATHER'S BIRTHPLACE 453 

was harvested, is still — thanks to dryness, so the local 
savant assured me — fertile, and if planted would grow! 
Talk of suspended animation! 

Below the town I lingered in the little valley of the 
Moselle, now laid out as a park, and reexamined the 
gate through which my father had been wont to ride. I 
think I sentimentalized a little over the long distance that 
had separated my father from his old home and how he 
must have longed to see it at times, and then finally, after 
walking about the church and school where he had been 
forced to go, I left Mayen with a sorrowful backward 
glance. For in spite of the fact that there was now no 
one there to whom I could count myself related, still it 
was from here that my ancestors had come. I had found 
at least the church that my father had attended, the 
priest's house and garden where possibly the identical 
cherry-tree was still standing — there were several. I 
had seen the gate through which my father had ridden 
as a boy with the soldiers and from which he had walked 
finally, never to return any more. That was enough. 
I shall always be glad I went to Mayen. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 

BEFORE leaving Frankfort I hurried to Cook's 
office to look after my mail. I found awaiting 
me a special delivery letter from a friend of Bar- 
fleur's, a certain famous pianist, Madame A., whom I 
had met in London. She had told me then that she was 
giving a recital at Munich and Leipzig and that she was 
coming to Frankfort about this very time. She was 
scheduled to play on Wednesday, and this was Monday. 
She was anxious to see me. There was a long account 
of the town outside Berlin where she resided, her house, 
its management by a capable housekeeper, etc. Would 
I go there? I could have her room. If I did, would I 
wait until she could come back at the latter end of the 
month? It was a most hospitable letter, and, coming 
from such a busy woman, a most flattering one and evi- 
dently instigated by Barfleur. I debated whether to ac- 
cept this charming invitation as I strolled about Frank- 
fort. 

At one corner of the shopping district I came upon a 
music store in the window of which were displayed a 
number of photographs of musical celebrities. A little 
to my surprise I noticed that the central place was occu- 
pied by a large photograph of Madame A. in her most 
attractive pose. A near-by bill-board contained full an- 
nouncement of her coming. I meditated somewhat more 
mellowly after this and finally returned to Cook's to leave 
a telegram. I would wait, I said, here at Frankfort 
until Wednesday. 

In due time Madame A. arrived and her recital, as 

454 



THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 455 

such things go, was a brilliant success. So far as I 
could judge, she had an enthusiastic following in Frank- 
fort, quite as significant, for instance, as a woman like 
Carreno would have in America. An institution known 
as the Saalbau, containing a large auditorium, was 
crowded, and there were flowers in plenty for Madame 
A. who opened and closed the program. The latter ar- 
rangement resulted in an ovation to her, men and women 
crowding about her feet below the platform and suggest- 
ing one composition and another that she might play — 
selections, obviously, that they had heard her render be- 
fore. 

She looked forceful, really brilliant, and tender in a 
lavender silk gown and wearing a spray of an enormous 
boucjuet of lilacs that I had sent her. 

This business of dancing attendance upon a national 
musical favorite was a bit strange for me, although once 
before in my life it fell to my lot, and tempestuous busi- 
ness it was, too. The artistic temperament! My hair 
rises! Madame A. I knew, after I saw her, was ex- 
pecting me to do the unexpected — to give edge as it 
were to her presence in Frankfort. And so strolling out 
before dinner I sought a florist's, and espying a whole 
jardiniere full of lilacs, I said to the woman florist, 
" How much for all those lilacs?" 
" You mean all ? " she asked. 
"All," I said. 

" Thirty marks," she replied, 

" Is n't that rather high ? " I said, assuming that it 
was wise to bargain a little anywhere. 

" But this is very early spring," she said. " These are 
the very first we 've had." 

"Very good," I said, "but if I should take them all 
would you put a nice ribbon on them? " 

" 0-o-oh ! " she hesitated, almost pouting, " ribbon is 



456 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



m 



very dear, my good sir. Still — if you wish — it will 
make a wonderful bouquet." 

" Here is my card," I said, " put that in it." And 
then I gave her the address and the hour, I wrote 
some little nonsense on the card, about tender melodies 
and spring-time, and then I went back to the hotel to at- 
tend Madame. 

A more bustling, aggressive little artist you would 
not want to find. When I called at eight-thirty — the 
recital was at nine — I found several musical satellites 
dancing attendance upon her. There was one beautiful 
little girl from Mayence I noticed, of the Jewish type, 
who followed Madame A. with positively adoring 
glances. There was another woman of thirty who was 
also caught in the toils of this woman's personality and 
swept along by her quite as one planet dislocates the 
orbit of another and makes it into a satellite. She had 
come all the way from Berlin. " Oh, Madame A.," 
she confided to me upon introduction, " oh, wonderful ! 
wonderful! Such playing! It is the most wonderful 
thing in the world to me." 

This woman had an attractive face, sallow and hol- 
low, with burning black eyes and rich black hair. Her 
body was long and thin, supple and graceful. She fol- 
lowed Madame A. too, with those strange, question- 
ing eyes. Life is surely pathetic. It was interesting, 
though, to be in this atmosphere of intense artistic en- 
thusiasm. 

When the last touch had been added to Madame's 
coiffure, a sprig of blossom of some kind inserted in her 
corsage, a flowing opera cloak thrown about the shoul- 
ders, she was finally ready. So busy was she, suggesting 
this and that to one and another of her attendants, that 
she scarcely saw me. " Oh, there you are," she beamed 
finally. " Now, I am quite ready. Is the machine here. 



THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 457 

Marie ? Oh, very good. And Herr Steiger ! O-o-oh ! " 
This last to a well-known violinist who had arrived. 

It turned out that there were two machines — one 
for the satellites and Herr Steiger who was also to play 
this evening, and one for Madame A., her maid and my- 
self. We finally debouched from the hall and elevator 
and fussy lobby, where German officers were strolling to 
and fro, into the machines and were away. Madame A. 
was lost in a haze of artistic contemplation with thoughts, 
no doubt, as to her program and her success. " Now 
maybe you will like my program better," she suggested 
after a while. " In London it was not so goot. I haf 
to feel my audience iss — how do you say ? — vith me. 
In Berlin and here and Dresden and Leipzig they like 
me. In England they do not know me." She sighed 
and looked out of the window. " Are you happy to be 
with me ? " she asked naively. 

" Quite," I replied. 

When we reached the auditorium we were ushered 
by winding passages into a very large green-room, a 
salon, as it were, where the various artists awaited 
their call to appear. It was already occupied by a half- 
dozen persons, or more, the friends of Madame A., 
the local manager, his hair brushed aloft like a cockatoo, 
several musicians, the violinist Herr Steiger, Godowsky 
the pianist, and one or two others. They all greeted 
Madame A. effusively. 

There was some conversation in French here and 
there, and now and then in English. The room was 
fairly babbling with temperament. It is always amusing 
to hear a group of artists talk. They are so fickle, make- 
believe, innocently treacherous, jealous, vainglorious, 
flattering. " Oh, yes — how splendid he was. That 
aria in C Major — perfect! But you know I did not 
care so much for his rendering of the Pastoral Sym- 



458 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

phony — very weak in the allegro ma non troppo — very. 
He should not attempt that. It is not in his vein — not 
the thing he does best " — fingers lifted very suggestively 
and warningly in the air. 

Some artist and his wife did not agree (very surpris- 
ing) ; the gentleman was the weaker instrument in this 
case. 

" Oh ! " — it was Madame A, talking, " now that is 
too-oo ridiculous. She must go places and he must go 
along as manager! Herr Spink wrote me from Ham- 
burg that he would not have him around. She has told 
him that he affects her playing. Still he goes ! It is 
too-oo much. They will not live together long." 

"Where is Herr Schochman?" (This being incident 
number three.) "Isn't he leading to-night? But they 
promised me ! No, I will not play then ! It is always 
the way. I know him well ! I know why he does it ! 
It is to annoy me. He does n't like me and he disap- 
points me." 

Great business of soothing the principal performer of 
the evening — the manager explaining volubly, friends 
offering soothing comment. More talk about other ar- 
tists, their wives, flirtations, successes, failures. 

In the midst of this, by some miscalculation (they were 
to have been delivered over the footlights after the end 
of Madame A.'s first number) in came my flowers. 
They looked like a fair-sized bush being introduced. 

" Oh ! " exclaimed Madame A. when the card was 
examined and they were offered to her, " how heavenly. 
Good heavens ! it is a whole tree. Oh — wonderful, 
wonderful! And these be-yutiful words! O-o-oh!" 

More coquettish glances and tender sighs. I could 
have choked with amusement. It was all such delicious 
by-play — quite the thing that artists expect and must 
have. She threw away the sprig of jasmine she wore 



THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 459 

and drawing out a few sprigs of the lilac wore those 
instead. " Now I can play," she exclaimed. 

Deep breathings, sighs, ecstatic expressions. 

Her turn came and, as I expected after hearing her 
in London, I heard delicious music. She had her fol- 
lowing. They applauded her to the echo. Her two fe- 
male satellites sat with me, and little Miss Meyer of 
Mayence — as I will call her — fairly groaned with hap- 
piness at times. Truly Madame A. was good to look 
upon, quite queenly, very assured. At the end of it all 
a fifteen- or twenty-minute ovation. It was beautiful, 
truly. 

While we were in the green-room talking between 
sections of the program and intermediate soloists, I said 
to her, " You are coming with me to supper, of course." 

" Of course! What else did you expect? " 

" Are there any other restaurants besides those of the 
Frankforter Hof?" 

" I think not." 

" How will you get rid of your friends after the per- 
formance? " 

" Oh, I shall send them away. You take a table any- 
where you like and I will come. Make it twelve 
o'clock." 

We were bundled back to the hotel, flowers, wraps, 
maid, satellites, and I went to see about the supper. In 
fifteen minutes it was ready ; and in twenty minutes more 
Madame A. came, quite rosy, all awake temperament- 
ally, inquisitive, defensive, coquettish, eager. We are 
all greedy animals at best — the finer the greedier. The 
whole world is looking to see what life will give it to 
eat — from ideas, emotions, enthusiasms down to grass 
and potatoes. We are organized appetites, magnificent, 
dramatic, pathetic at times, but appetites just the same. 
The greater the appetite the more magnificent the spec- 



46o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

tacle. Satiety is deadly discouraging. The human 
stomach is the grand central organ — life in all its 
amazing, subtle, heavenly, pathetic ramifications has been 
built up around that. The most pathetic thing in life 
is a hungry man; the most stirringly disturbing thing, 
a triumphant, greedy one. Madame A. sat down to our 
cold chicken, salad, champagne, and coffee with beaming 
birdlike eyes. 

" Oh, it is so good to see you again ! " she declared ; 
but her eyes were on the chicken. " I was so afraid 
when I wrote you from Munich that you would not get 
my letter. I can't tell you how you appeal to me; we 
have only met twice, yet you see we are quite old friends 
already ! " 

Just as her none too subtle flattery was beginning to 
work, she remarked casually, " Do you know Mr, Barfleur 
well?" 

" Oh, fairly well. Yes, I know a little something 
about him." 

"You like him, don't you?" 

" I am very fond of him," I answered, my vanity de- 
flating rapidly. 

" He is so fond of you," she assured me. " Oh, he 
admires you so much. What you think must have con- 
siderable weight with him, eh ? Where did you first meet 
him ? " she asked. 

" In New York." 

" Now, between us : he is one of the few men in the 
world I deeply care for — but I don't think he cares for 
me." 

"Good Lord!" I said to myself wearily, "why is it 
that all the charming ladies I meet either are or have 
been in love with Barfleur. It 's getting monotonous ! " 
But I had to smile. 

"You will visit me in Berlin?" she was saying. "I 



THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 461 

will be back by the twenty-sixth. Can't you wait that 
long? Berlin is so interesting. When I come, we shall 
have such nice talks! " 

" Yes — about Barfleur ! " I thought to myself. Aloud 
I said vaguely, " It is charming of you ; I will stop over 
to see you, if I possibly can." Then I said good night 
and left. 



CHAPTER XLVII 

BERLIN 

BERLIN, when I reached it, first manifested itself 
in a driving rain. If I laugh at it forever and 
ever as a blunder-headed, vainglorious, self-appre- 
ciative city I shall always love it too. Paris has had its 
day, and will no doubt have others; London is content 
with an endless, conservative day ; Berlin's is still to come 
and come brilliantly. The blood is there, and the hope, 
and the moody, lustful, Wagnerian temperament. 

But first, before I reached it, I suffered a strange mental 
revolt at being in Germany at all. Why ? I can scarcely 
say. Perhaps I was beginning to be depressed with what 
in my prejudice I called the dullness of Germany. A 
little while later I recognized that while there is an ex- 
treme conflict of temperament between the average Ger- 
man and myself, I could yet admire them without wishing 
to be anything like them. Of all the peoples I saw I 
should place the Germans first for sobriety, industry, 
thoroughness, a hearty intolerance of sham, a desire and 
a willingness to make the best of a very difficult earthly 
condition. In many respects they are not artistically 
appetizing, being gross physically, heartily passionate, 
vain, and cocksure; but those things after all are unim- 
portant. They have, in spite of all their defects, great 
emotional, intellectual, and physical capacities, and these 
things are important. I think it is unquestionable that 
in the main they take life far too seriously. The belief 
in a hell, for instance, took a tremendous grip on the 
Teutonic mind and the Lutheran interpretation of Prot- 
estantism, as it finally worked out, was as dreary as any- 

462 



BERLIN 463 

thing could be — almost as dreary as Presbyterlanism in 
Scotland. That is the sad German temperament. A 
great nationality, business success, public distinction is 
probably tending to make over or at least modify the 
Teutonic cast of thought which is gray; but in parts 
of Germany, for instance at Mayence, you see the older 
spirit almost in full force. 

In the next place I was out of Italy and that land had 
taken such a strange hold on me. What a far cry from 
Italy to Germany! I thought. Gone; once and for all, 
the wonderful clarity of atmosphere that pervades almost 
the whole of Italy from the Alps to Rome and I presume 
Sicily. Gone the obvious dolce far nicnte, the lovely 
cities set on hills, the castles, the fortresses, the strange 
stone bridges, the hot, white roads winding like snowy 
ribbons in the distance. No olive trees, no cypresses, no 
vimbrella trees or ilexes, no white, yellow, blue, brown 
and sea-green houses, no wooden plows, white oxen and 
ambling, bare-footed friars. In its place (the Alps and 
Switzerland between) this low rich land, its railroads 
threading it like steel bands, its citizens standing up as 
though at command, its houses in the smaller towns al- 
most uniformly red, its architecture a twentieth century- 
modification of an older order of many-gabled roofs — 
the order of Albrecht Diirer — with its fanciful decora- 
tions, conical roofs and pinnacles and quaint windows and 
doors that suggest the bird-boxes of our childhood. Ger- 
many appears in a way to have attempted to abandon the 
medieval architectural ideal that still may be seen in May- 
ence, Mayen, the heart of Frankfort, Nuremberg, Heidel- 
berg and other places and to adapt its mood to the modern 
theory of how buildings ought to be constructed, but it 
has not quite done so. The German scroll-loving mind 
of the Middle Ages is still the German scroll-loving mind 
of to-day. Look and you will see it quaintly cropping 



464 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

out everywhere. Not in those wonderful details of in- 
tricacy, Teutonic fussiness, naive, jester-like grotesque- 
ness which makes the older sections of so many old Ger- 
man cities so wonderful, but in a slight suggestion of 
them here and there — a quirk of roof, an over-elaborate- 
ness of decoration, a too protuberant frieze or grape- 
viney, Bacchus-mooded, sex-ornamented panel, until you 
say to yourself quite wisely, " Ah, Teutons will be Teu- 
tons still." They are making a very different Germany 
from what the old Germany was — modern Germany 
dating from 1871 — but it is not an entirely different 
Germany. Its citizens are still stocky, red-blooded, 
physically excited and excitable, emotional, mercurial, 
morbid, enthusiastic, women-loving and life-loving, and 
no doubt will be so, praise God, until German soil loses its 
inherent essentials, and Gennan climate makes for some 
other variations not yet indicated in the race. 

But to return to Berlin. I saw it first jogging down 
Unter den Linden from the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof 
(station) to Cook's Berlin agency, seated comfortably in 
a closed cab behind as fat a horse and driver as one would 
wish to see. And from there, still farther along Unter 
den Linden and through the Wilhelmstrasse to Leipzig- 
strasse and the Potsdamer Bahnhof I saw more of it. 
Oh, the rich guttural value of the German " platzes " and 
" strasses " and " ufers " and " dams." They make up 
a considerable portion of your city atmpsphere for you 
in Berlin. You just have to get used to them — just as 
you have to accept the " fabriks " and the " restaura- 
tions " and the " wein handlungs," and all the other 
" ichs," " lings," " bergs," " briickes," until you sigh for 
the French and Italian "-rics " and the English-American 
"-rys." However, among the first things that impressed 
me were these: all Berlin streets, seemingly, were wide 
with buildings rarely more than five stories high. Every- 




A German dance hall, Berlin 



BERLIN 465 

thing, literally everything, was American new — and 
newer — German new ! And the cabbies were the largest, 
fattest, most broad-backed, most thick-through and 
Dentschiest looking creatures I have ever beheld. Oh, the 
marvel of those glazed German cabby hats with the 
little hard rubber decorations on the side. Nowhere 
else in Europe is there anything like these cabbies. They 
do not stand ; they sit, heavily and spaciously — alone. 

The faithful Baedeker has little to say for Berlin. 
Art? It is almost all in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, 
in the vicinity of the Kupferdam. And as for public 
institutions, spots of great historic interest — they are 
a dreary and negligible list. But, nevertheless and not- 
withstanding, Berlin appealed to me instantly as one of 
the most interesting and forceful of all the cities, and 
that solely because it is new, crude, human, growing 
feverishly, unbelievably ; and growing in a distinct and 
individual way. They have achieved and are achieving 
something totally distinct and worth while — a new 
place to go; and after a while, I haven't the slightest 
doubt, thousands and even hundreds of thousands of 
travelers will go there. But for many and many a day 
the sensitive and artistically inclined will not admire it. 

My visit to Cook's brought me a mass of delayed mail 
which cheered me greatly. It was now raining pitch- 
forks but my bovine driver, who looked somehow like 
a segment of a wall, managed to bestow my trunk and 
bags in such a fashion that they were kept dry, and off 
we went for the hotel. I had a preconceived notion 
that Unter den Linden was a magnificent avenue lined 
shadily with trees and crowded with palaces. Nothing 
could have been more erroneous. The trees are few 
and insignificant, the palaces entirely wanting. It is a 
very wide business street, lined with hotels, shops, res- 
taurants, newspaper offices and filled with a parading 



466 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

throng in pleasant weather. At one end it gives Into 
an area known as the Lustgarten crowded with palaces, 
art galleries, the Berlin Cathedral, the Imperial Opera 
House and what not; at the other end (it is only about 
a mile long) into the famous Berlin Thiergarten, for- 
merly a part of the Imperial (Hohenzollern) hunting- 
forest. On the whole, the avenue was a disappointment. 

For suggestions of character, individuality, innate 
Teutonic charm or the reverse — as these things strike 
one — growth, prosperity, promise, and the like, Ber- 
lin cannot be equaled in Europe. Quite readily I can 
see how it might irritate and repel the less aggressive 
denizens of less hopeful and determined realms. The 
German, when he is oppressed is terribly depressed ; when 
he is In the saddle, nothing can equal his bump of I-am- 
ity. It becomes so balloon-like and astounding that the 
world may only gaze in astonishment or retreat in an- 
ger, dismay, or uproarious amusement. The present- 
day Germans do take themselves so seriously and from 
many points of view with good reason, too. 

I don't know where in Europe, outside of Paris, If 
even there, you will see a better-kept city. It Is so 
clean and spruce and fresh that it is a joy to walk there 
— anywhere. Mile after mile of straight, imposing 
streets greet your gaze. Berlin needs a great Pantheon, 
an avenue such as Unter den Linden lined with official 
palaces (not shops), and unquestionably a magnificent 
museum of art — I mean a better building. Its present 
public and imperial structures are most uninspired. They 
suggest the American-European architecture of 1860- 
1870. The public monuments of Berlin, and particularly 
their sculptural adornments are for the most part a crime 
against humanity. 

I remember standing and looking one evening at that 
noble German effort known as the memorial statue of 



BERLIN 467 

William I, in the Lustgarten, unquestionably the fiercest 
and most imposing of all the Berlin military sculptures. 
This statue speaks loudly for all Berlin and for all 
Germany and for just what the Teutonic disposition 
would like to be — namely, terrible, colossal, astound- 
ing, world-scarifying, and the like. It almost shouts 
" Ho ! see what I am," but the sad part of it is that it 
does it badly, not with that reserve that somehow in- 
variably indicates tremendous power so much better 
than mere bluster does. What the Germans seem not 
to have learned in their art at least is that " easy does 
it." Their art is anything but easy. It is almost in- 
variably showy, truculent, vainglorious. But to con- 
tinue : The whole neighborhood in which this statue 
occurs, and the other neighborhood at the other end 
of Unter den Linden, where stands the Reichstag and 
the like, all in the center of Berlin, as it were, is con- 
ceived, designed, and executed (in my judgment) in 
the same mistaken spirit. Truly, when you look about 
you at the cathedral (save the mark) or the Royal 
Palace in the Lustgarten, or at the Winged Victory be- 
fore the Reichstag or at the Reichstag itself, and the 
statue of Bismarck in the Konigs-Platz (the two great 
imperial centers), you sigh for the artistic spirit of 
Italy. But no words can do justice to the folly of 
spending three million dollars to erect such a thing as 
this Berlin Dom or cathedral. It is so bad that it hurts. 
And I am told that the Kaiser himself sanctioned some 
of the architectural designs. And it was only com- 
pleted between 1894 and 1906. Shades of Brabante and 
Pisano ! 

But if I seem disgusted with this section of Berlin — 
its evidence of Empire, as it were — there was much 
more that truly charmed me.' Wherever I wandered I 
could perceive through all the pulsing life of this busy 



468 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

city the thoroughgoing German temperament — its 
moody poverty, its phlegmatic middle-class prosperity, 
its aggressive commercial, financial, and, above all, its 
official and imperial life. Berlin is shot through with 
the constant suggestion of officialism and imperialism. 
The German policeman with his shining brass helmet and 
brass belt; the Berlin sentry in his long military gray 
overcoat, his musket over his shoulder, his high cap 
shading his eyes, his black-and-white striped sentry-box 
behind him, stationed apparently at every really impor- 
tant corner and before every official palace; the Ger- 
man military and imperial automobiles speeding their 
independent ways, all traffic cleared away before them, 
the small flag of officialdom or imperialism fluttering de- 
fiantly from the foot-rails as they- flash at express speed 
past you ; — these things suggest an individuality which 
no other European city that I saw quite ecjualed. It 
represented what I would call determination, self-suf- 
ficiency, pride. Berlin is new, green, vigorous, astound- 
ing — a city that for speed of growth puts Chicago en- 
tirely into the shade; that for appearance, cleanliness, 
order, for military precision and thoroughness has no 
counterpart anywhere. It suggests to you all the time, 
somethifig very much greater to come which is the most 
interesting thing that can be said about any city, any- 
where. 

One panegyric I should like to write on Berlin 
concerns not so much its social organization as a city, 
though that is interesting enough, but specifically its 
traffic and travel arrangements. To be sure it is not 
yet such a city as either New York, London or Paris, 
but it has over three million people, a crowded business 
heart and a heavy, daily, to-and-fro-swinging tide of 
suburban traffic. There are a number of railway sta- 
tions in the great German capital, the Potsdamer Bahn- 



BERLIN 469 

ho£, the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof, the Anhaher Bahnhof 
and so on, and coming from each in the early hours 
of the morning, or pouring toward them at evening are 
the same eager streams of people that one meets in New 
York at similar hours. 

The Germans are amazingly like the Americans. 
Sometimes I think that we get the better portion of 
our progressive, constructive characteristics from them. 
Only, the Germans, I am convinced, are so much more 
thorough. They go us one better in economy, energy, 
endurance, and thoroughness. The American already 
is beginning to want to play too much. The Germans 
have not reached that stage. 

The railway stations I found were excellent, with great 
switching-yards and enormous sheds arched with glass 
and steel, where the trains waited. In Berlin I admired 
the suburban train service as much as I did that of Lon- 
don, if not more. That in Paris was atrocious. Here 
the trains offered a choice of first, second, and third class, 
with the vast majority using the second and third. I 
saw little difference in the crowds occupying either 
class. The second-class compartments were upholstered 
in a greyish-brown corduroy. The third-class seats were 
of plain wood, varnished and scrupulously clean. I tried 
all three classes and finally fixed on the third as good 
enough for me. 

I wish all Americans who at present suffer the indig- 
nities of the American street-railway and steam-railway 
suburban service could go to Berlin and see what that 
city has to teach them in this respect. Berlin is much 
larger than Chicago. It is certain soon to be a city 
of five or six millions of people — very soon. The 
plans for handling this mass of people comfortably and 
courteously are already in operation. The German pub- 
lic service is obviously not left to supposedly kindly 



470 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

minded business gentlemen — " Christian gentlemen," — ■ 
as Mr. Baer of the Reading once chose to put it, " in 
partnership with God." The populace may be under- 
lings to an imperial Kaiser, subject to, conscription and 
eternal inspection, but at least the money-making 
" Christian gentlemen " with their hearts and souls cen- 
tered on their private purses and working, as Mr. Croker 
once said of himself, " for their own pockets all the 
time," are not allowed to ^' take it out of " the rank and 
file. 

No doubt the German street-railways and steam-rail- 
ways are making a reasonable sum of money and are 
eager to make more. I have n't the least doubt but that 
heavy, self-opinionated, vainglorious German directors 
of great wealth gather around mahogany tables in cham- 
bers devoted to meetings of directors and listen to ways 
and means of cutting down expenses and " improving " 
the service. Beyond the shadow^ of a doubt there are 
hard, hired managers, eager to win the confidence and 
support of their superiors and ready to feather their own 
nests at the expense of the masses, who would gladly 
cut down the service, " pack 'em in," introduce the " cut- 
ting out " system of car service and see that the " car 
ahead " idea was worked to the last maddening extreme ; 
but in Germany, for some strange, amazing reason, they 
don't get a chance. What is the matter with Germany, 
anyhow? I should like to know. Really I would. 
Why isn't the "Christian gentleman" theory of busi- 
ness introduced there? The population of Germany, 
acre for acre and mile for mile, is much larger than 
that of America. They have sixty-five million people 
crowded into an area as big as Texas. Why don't 
they "pack 'em in"? Why don't they introduce the 
American "sardine" subway service? You don't find 
it anywhere in Germany, for some strange reason. 



I 



BERLIN 471 

Why ? They have a subway service in Berlin. It serves 
vast masses of people, just as the subway does in New 
York; its platforms are crowded with people. But you 
can get a seat just the same. There is no vociferated 
" step lively " there. Overcrowding is n't a joke over 
there as it is here — something to be endured with a 
feeble smile until you are spiritually comparable to a 
door mat. There must be "Christian gentlemen" of 
wealth and refinement in Germany and Berlin. Why 
don't they "get on the job"? The thought arouses 
strange uncertain feelings in me. 

Take, for instance, the simple matter of starting and 
stopping street-railway cars in the Berlin business heart. 
In so far as I could see, that area, mornings and evenings, 
was as crowded as any similar area in Paris, London, or 
New York. Street-cars have to be run through it, started, 
stopped; passengers let on and off — a vast tide carried 
in and out of the city. Now the way this matter is 
worked in New York is quite ingenious. We operate 
what might be described as a daily guessing contest in- 
tended to develop the wits, muscles, lungs, and tempers 
of the people. The scheme, in so far as the street rail- 
way companies are concerned, is (after running the roads 
as economically as possible) to see how thoroughly the 
people can be fooled in their efforts to discover when and 
where a car will stop. In Berlin, however, they have, 
for some reason, an entirely different idea. There the 
idea is not to fool the people at all but to get them in 
and out of the city as quickly as possible. So, as in 
Paris, London, Rome, and elsewhere, a plan of fixed 
stopping-places has been arranged. Signs actually in- 
dicate where the cars stop and there — marvel of mar- 
vels — they all stop even in the so-called rush hours. 
No traffic policeman, apparently, can order them to go 
ahead without stopping. They must stop. And so the 



472 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

people do not run for the cars, the motorman has no 
joy in outwitting anybody. Perhaps that is why the Ger- 
mans are neither so agile, quick-witted, or subtle as the 
Americans. 

And then, take in addition — if you will bear with 
me another moment — this matter of the Berlin subur- 
ban service as illustrated by the lines to Potsdam and 
elsewhere. It is true the officers, and even the Emperor 
of Germany, living at Potsdam and serving the Imperial 
German Government there may occasionally use this line, 
but thousands upon thousands of intermediate and ple- 
beian Germans use it also. You can always get a seat. 
Please notice this word always. There are three classes 
and you can always get a seat in any class — not the first 
or second classes only, but the third class and particu- 
larly the third class. There are " rush " hours in Berlin 
just as there are in New York, dear reader. Peo- 
ple swarm into the Berlin railway stations and at Ber- 
lin street-railway corners and crowd on cars just as 
they do here. The lines fairly seethe with cars. On the 
tracks ranged in the Potsdamer Bahnhof, for instance, 
during the rush hours, you will see trains consisting of 
eleven, twelve, and thirteen cars, mostly third-class ac- 
commodation, waiting to receive you. And when one 
is gone, another and an equally large train is there on 
the adjoining track and it is going to leave in another 
minute or two also. And when that is gone there will 
be another, and so it goes. 

There is not the slightest desire evident anywhere to 
" pack " anybody in. There is n't any evidence that any- 
body wants to make anything (dividends, for instance) 
out of straps. There o/i'e no straps. These poor, unlib- 
erated. Kaiser-ruled people would really object to straps 
and standing in the aisles. They would compel a decent 
service and there would be no loud cries on the part of 



1 



BERLIN 473 

" Christian gentlemen " operating large and profitable 
systems as to the " rights of propert}^" the need of " con- 
serving the constitution," the privilege of appealing to 
Federal judges, and the right of having every legal tech- 
nicality invoked to the letter; — or, if there were, they 
would get scant attention. Germany just does n't see 
public service in that light. It has n't fought, bled, and 
died, perhaps, for " liberty." It has n't had George 
Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson 
and Abraham Lincoln. All it has had is Frederick the 
Great and Emperor William I and Bismarck and Von 
Moltke. Strange, isn't it? Queer, how Imperialism 
apparently teaches people to be civil, while Democracy 
does the reverse. We ought to get a little " Imperialism " 
into our government, I should say. We ought to make 
American law and American government supreme, but 
over it there ought to be a " supremer " people who really 
know what their rights are, who respect liberties, decen- 
cies, and courtesies for themselves and others, and who 
demand and see that their government and their law and 
their servants, public and private, are responsive and re- 
sponsible to them, rather than to the " Christian gentle- 
men " who want to " pack 'em in." If you don't believe 
it, go to Berlin and then see if you come home again 
cheerfully believing that this is still the land of the free 
and the home of the brave. Rather I think you will be- 
gin to feel that we ai"e getting to be the land of the duh 
and the home of the door-mat. Nothing more and noth- 
ing less. 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 

DURING the first ten days I saw considerable of 
German night-life, in company with Herr A., 
a stalwart Prussian who went out of his way to 
be nice to me. I cannot say that, after Paris and Monte 
Carlo, I was greatly impressed, although all that I saw in 
Berlin had this advantage, that it bore sharply the im- 
print of German nationality. The cafes were not espe- 
cially noteworthy. I do not know what I can say about 
any of them which will indicate their individuality. 
" Piccadilly " was a great evening drinking-place near 
the Potsdamer Platz, which was all glass, gold, marble, 
glittering with lights and packed with the Germans, en 
famille, and young men and their girls. 

" La Clou " was radically different. In a way it 
was an amazing place, catering to the moderately 
prosperous middle class. It seated, I should say, easily 
fifteen hundred people, if not more, on the ground floor; 
and every table, in the evening at least, was full. At 
either end of the great center aisle bisecting it was sta- 
tioned a stringed orchestra and when one ceased the 
other immediately began, so that there was music with- 
out interruption. Father and mother and young Lena, 
the little Heine, and the two oldest girls or boys were all 
here. During the evening, up one aisle and down an- 
other, there walked a constant procession of boys and 
girls and young men and young women, making shy, 
conservative eyes at one another. 

In Berlin every one drinks beer or the lighter wines — 
the children being present — and no harm seems to come 

474 



THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 475 

from it. I presume drunkenness is not on the increase 
in Germany. And in Paris they sit at tables in front 
of cafes — men and women — and sip their liqueurs. 
It is a very pleasant way to enjoy your leisure. Outside 
of trade or the desire to be president, vice-president, or 
secretary of something, we in America have so often no 
real diversions. 

In no sense could either of these restaurants be said 
to be smart. But Berlin, outside of one or two selected 
spots, does not run to smartness. The " Cabaret Lin- 
den " and the *' Cabaret Arcadia " were, once more, of 
a different character. There was one woman at the 
Cabaret Linden who struck me as having real artistic 
talent of a strongly Teutonic variety. Claire Waldoff 
was her name, a hard, shock-headed tomboy of a 
girl, who sang in a harsh, guttural voice of soldiers, mer- 
chants, janitors, and policemen — a really briUiant pre- 
sentation of local German characteristics. It is curious 
how these little touches of character drawn from every- 
day life invariably win thunders of applause. How the 
world loves the homely, the simple, the odd, the silly, 
the essentially true! Unlike the others at this place, 
there was not a suggestive thing about anything which 
this woman said or did; yet this noisy, driveling audi- 
ence could not get enough of her. She was truly an 
artist. 

One night we went to the Palais de Danse, admit- 
tedly Berlin's greatest night-life achievement. For sev- 
eral days Herr A. had been saying : " Now to-mor- 
row we must go to the Palais de Danse, then you will 
see something," but every evening when we started out, 
something else had intervened. I was a little skeptical 
of his enthusiastic praise of this institution as being bet- 
ter than anything else of its kind in Europe. You 
had to take Herr A.'s vigorous Teutonic estimate of Ber- 



476 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

lin with a grain of salt, though I did think that a city 
that had put itself together in this wonderful way in not 
much more than a half-century had certainly considerable 
reason to boast. 

" But what about the Cafe de Paris at Monte Carlo? " 
I suggested, remembering vividly the beauty and glitter 
of the place. 

" No, no, no ! " he exclaimed, with great emphasis — 
he had a habit of unconsciously making a fist when he 
was emphatic — " not in Monte Carlo, not in Paris, not 
anywhere," 

" Very good," I replied, " this must be very fine. 
Lead on." 

So we went. 

I think Herr A. was pleased to note how much of my 
skepticism melted after passing the sedate exterior of 
this astounding place. 

" I want to tell you something," said Herr A. as we 
climbed out of our taxi — a good, solid, reasonably 
priced, Berlin taxi — " if you come with your wife, your 
daughter, or your sister you buy a ticket for yourself — 
four marks — and walk in. Nothing is charged for 
your female companions and no notice is taken of them. 
If you come here with a demi-mondaine, you pay four 
marks for yourself and four for her, and you cannot get 
in without. They know. They have men at the door 
who are experts in this matter. They want you to bring 
such women, but you have to pay. If such a woman 
comes alone, she goes in free. How's that?" 

Once inside we surveyed a brilliant spectacle — far 
more ornate than the Cafe I'Abbaye or the Cafe Maxim, 
though by no means so enticing. Paris is Paris and 
Berlin is Berlin and the Germans cannot do as do the 
French. They have n't the air — the temperament. 
Everywhere in Germany you feel that — that strange 



THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 477 

solidity of soul which cannot be gay as the French 
are gay. Nevertheless the scene inside was brilliant. 
Brilliant was the word. I would not have believed, until 
I saw it, that the German temperament or the German 
sense of thrift would have permitted it and yet after 
seeing the marvelous German officer, why not? 

The main chamber — very large — consisted of a 
small, central, highly polished dancing floor, canopied 
far above by a circular dome of colored glass, glittering 
white or peach-pink by turns, and surrounded on all sides 
by an elevated platform or floor, two or three feet above 
it, crowded with tables ranged in circles on ascending 
steps, so that all might see. Beyond the tables again was 
a wide, level, semi-circular promenade, flanked by ornate 
walls and divans and set with palms, marbles and intri- 
cate gilt curio cases. The general effect was one of 
intense light, pale, diaphanous silks of creams and lemon 
hues, white-and-gold walls, white tables, — a perfect 
glitter of glass mirrors, and picturesque paneling. 
Beyond the dancing-floor was a giant, gold-tinted, rococo 
organ, and within a recess in this, under the tinted pipes, 
a stringed orchestra. The place was crowded with 
women of the half-world, for the most part Germans — 
unusually slender, in the majority of cases delicately 
featured, as the best of these women are, and beautifully 
dressed. I say beautifully. Qualify it any way you 
want to. Put it dazzlingly, ravishingly, showily, out- 
rageously — any way you choose. No respectable 
woman might come so garbed. Many of these women 
were unbelievably attractive, carried themselves with a 
grand air, pea-fowl wise, and lent an atmosphere 
of color and life of a very showy kind. The place was 
also crowded, I need not add, with young men in evening 
clothes. Only champagne was served to drink — 
champagne at twenty marks the bottle. Champagne at 



478 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

twenty marks the bottle in Berlin is high. You can get 
a fine suit of clothes for seventy or eighty marks. 

The principal diversions here were dining, dancing, 
drinking. As at Monte Carlo and in Paris, you saw 
here that peculiarly suggestive dancing of the habitues 
and the more skilled performances of those especially 
hired for the occasion. The Spanish and Russian 
dancers, as in Paris, the Turkish and Tyrolese speci- 
mens, gathered from Heaven knows where, were here. 
There were a number of handsome young officers present 
who occasionally danced with the women they were es- 
corting. When the dancing began the lights in the 
dome turned pink. When it ceased, the lights in the 
dome were a glittering white. The place is, I fancy, 
a rather quick development for Berlin. We drank cham- 
pagne, waved away charmers, and finally left, at two or 
three o'clock, when the law apparently compelled the 
closing of this great central chamber; though after that 
hour all the patrons who desired might adjourn to an in- 
ner sanctum, quite as large, not so showy, but full of 
brilliant, strolling, dining, drinking life where, I was 
informed, one could stay till eight in the morning if 
one chose. There was some drunkenness here, but not 
much, and an air of heavy gaiety. I left thinking to 
myself, " Once is enough for a place like this." 

I went one day to Potsdam and saw the Imperial 
Palace and grounds and the Royal Parade. The Em- 
peror had just left for Venice. As a seat of royalty it 
did not interest me at all. It was a mere imitation of 
the grounds and palace at Versailles, but as a river valley 
it was excellent. Very dull, indeed, were the state 
apartments. I tried to be interested in the glass ball- 
rooms, picture galleries, royal auditoriums and the like. 
But alas! The servitors, by the way, were just as anx- 
ious for tips as any American waiters. Potsdam did 



THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 479 

not impress me. From there I went to Grunewald and 
strolled in the wonderful forest for an enchanted three 
hours. That was worth while. 

The rivers of every city have their individuality and 
to me the Spree and its canals seem eminently suited to 
Berlin. The water effects — and they are always artistic- 
ally important and charming — are plentiful. 

The most pleasing portions of Berlin to me were those 
which related to the branches of the Spree — its canals 
and the lakes about it. Always there were wild ducks 
flying over the housetops, over offices and factories ; ducks 
passing from one bit of water to another, their long 
necks protruding before them, their metallic colors 
gleaming in the sun. 

You see quaint things in Berlin, such as you will not 
see elsewhere — the Spreewald nurses, for instance, in 
the Thiergarten with their short, scarlet, balloon skirt 
emphasized by a white apron, their triangular white linen 
head-dress, very conspicuous. It was actually suggested 
to me one day as something interesting to do, to go to 
the Zoological Gardens and see the animals fed! I 
chanced to come there when they were feeding the owls, 
giving each one a mouse, — live or dead, I could not quite 
make out. That was enough for me. I despise flesh- 
eating birds anyhow. They are quite the most horrible 
of all evoluted specimens. This particular collection — ■ 
eagles, hawks, condors, owls of every known type and 
variety, and buzzards — all sat in their cages gorging 
themselves on raw meat or mice. The owls, to my dis- 
gust, fixed me with their relentless eyes, the while they 
tore at the entrails of their victims. As a realist, of 
course, I ought to accept all these delicate manifestations 
of the iron constitution of the universe as interesting, 
but I can't. Now and then, very frequently, in fact, life 



48o A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

becomes too much for my hardy stomach, I withdraw, 
chilled and stupefied by the way strength survives and 
weakness goes under. And to think that as yet we have 
no method of discovering why the horrible appears and 
no reason for saying that it should not. Yet one can 
actually become surfeited with beauty and art and take 
refuge in the inartistic and the unlovely! 

One of the Berliners' most wearying characteristics is 
their contentious attitude. To the few, barring the 
women, to whom I was introduced, I could scarcely talk. 
As a matter of fact I was not expected to. They would 
talk to me. Argument was, in its way, obviously an in- 
sult. Anything that I might have to say or suggest was 
of small importance; anything they had to say was of 
the utmost importance commercially, socially, education- 
ally, spiritually, — any way you chose, — and they empha- 
sized so many of their remarks with a deep voice, a hard, 
guttural force, a frown, or a rap on the table with their 
fists that I was constantly overawed. 

Take this series of incidents as typical of the Ber- 
lin spirit : One day as I walked along Unter den Linden 
I saw a minor officer standing in front of a sentry who 
was not far from his black-and-white striped sentry-box, 
his body as erect as a ramrod, his gun " presented " stiff 
before him, not an eyelash moving, not a breath stirring. 
This endured for possibly fifty seconds or longer. You 
would not get the importance of this if you did not 
realize how strict the German military regulations are. 
At the sound of an officer's horn or the observed ap- 
proach of a superior officer there is a noticeable stiffen- 
ing of the muscles of the various sentries in sight. Li 
this instance the minor officer imagined that he had not 
been saluted properly, I presume, and suspected that the 
soldier was heavy with too much beer. Hence the rigid 



THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 481 

test that followed. After the officer was gone, the soldier 
looked for all the world like a self-conscious house-dog 
that has just escaped a good beating, sheepishly glancing 
out of the corners of his eyes and wondering, no doubt, 
if by any chance the officer was coming back. "If he 
had moved so much as an eyelid," said a citizen to me, 
emphatically and approvingly, " he would have been sent 
to the guard-house, and rightly. Swine-hound! He 
should tend to his duties ! " 

Coming from Milan to Lucerne, and again from Lu- 
cerne to Frankfort, and again from Frankfort to Berlin, 
I sat in the various dining-cars next to Germans who 
were obviously in trade and successful. Oh, the com- 
pact sufficiency of them! "Now, when you are in 
Italy," said one to another, " you see signs — * French 
spoken,' or ' English spoken ' ; not * German spoken.' 
Fools! They really do not know where their business 
comes from." 

On the train from Lucerne to Frankfort I overheard 
another sanguine and vigorous pair. Said one: 
" Where I was in Spain, near Barcelona, things were 
wTetched. Poor houses, poor wagons, poor clothes, poor 
stores. And they carry English and American goods 
— • these dunces ! Proud and slow. You can scarcely 
tell them anything." 

" We will change all that in ten years," replied the 
other. " We are going after that trade. They need 
up-to-date German methods." 

In a cafe in Charlottenberg, near the Kaiser-Friedrich 
Gedachtnis-Kirche, I sat with three others. One was 
from Leipzig, in the fur business. The others were 
merchants of Berlin. I was not of their party, merely 
an accidental auditor. 

" In Russia the conditions are terrible. They do not 
know what life is. Such villages ! " 



482 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" Do the English buy there much ? " 

" A great deal." 

" We shall have to settle this trade business with war 
yet. It will come. We shall have to fight." 

" In eight days," said one of the Berliners, " we could 
put an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men in 
England with all supplies sufficient for eight weeks. 
Then what would they do ? " 

Do these things suggest the German sense of self- 
sufficiency and ability? They are the commonest of the 
commonplaces. 

During the short time that I was in Berlin I was a 
frequent witness of quite human but purely Teutonic 
bursts of temper — that rapid, fiery mounting of choler 
which verges apparently on a physical explosion, — the 
bursting of a blood vessel. I was going home one night 
late, with Herr A., from the Potsdamer Bahnhof, when 
we were the witnesses of an absolutely magnificent and 
spectacular fight between two Germans — so Teutonic and 
temperamental as to be decidedly worth while. It oc- 
curred between a German escorting a lady and carrying 
a grip at the same time, and another German somewhat 
more slender and somewhat taller, wearing a high hat 
and carrying a walking-stick. This was on one of the 
most exclusive suburban lines operating out of Berlin. 

It appears that the gentleman with the high hat and 
cane, in running to catch his train along with many 
others, severely jostled the gentleman with the lady and 
the portmanteau. On the instant, an absolutely terrific 
explosion ! To my astonishment — and, for the mo- 
ment, I can say my horror — I saw these two very 
fiercely attack each other, the one striking wildly with 
his large portmanteau, the other replying with lusty 
blows of his stick, a club-like affair which fell with hard 
whacks on his rival's head. Hats were knocked off, 



THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 483 

shirt-fronts marked and torn ; blood began to flow where 
heads and faces were cut severely, and almost pande- 
monium broke loose in the surrounding crowd. 

Fighting always produces an atmosphere of intensity 
in any nationality, but this German company seemed 
fairly to coruscate with anguish, wrath, rage, blood- 
thirsty excitement. The crowd surged to and fro as the 
combatants moved here and there. A large German of- 
ficer, his brass helmet a welcome shield in such an affair, 
was brought from somewhere. Such noble German epi- 
thets as "Swine-hound!" " Hundsknochen ! " (dog's 
bone), " Schafskopf ! " (sheep's head), " Schafsgesicht! " 
(sheep- face), and even more untranslatable words filled 
the air. The station platform was fairly boiling with 
excitement. Husbands drove their wives back, wives 
pulled their husbands away, or tried to, and men im- 
mediately took sides as men will. Finally the mag- 
nificent representative of law and order, large and im- 
pregnable as Gibraltar, interposed his great bulk between 
the two. Comparative order was restored. Each con- 
testant was led away in an opposite direction. Some 
names and addresses were taken by the policeman. In 
so far as I could see no arrests were made; and finally 
both combatants, cut and bleeding as they were, were 
allowed to enter separate cars and go their way. That 
was Berlin to the life. The air of the city, of Germany 
almost, was ever rife with contentious elements and emo- 
tions. 

I should like to relate one more incident, and con- 
cerning quite another angle of Teutonism. This relates 
to German sentiment, which is as close to the German sur- 
face as German rage and vanity. It occurred in the out- 
skirts of Berlin — one of those interesting regions where 
soHd blocks of gold- and silver-balconied apartment 
houses march up to the edge of streetless, sewerless, light- 



484 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

less green fields and stop. Beyond lie endless areas of 
truck gardens or open common yet to be developed. City- 
ward lie miles on miles of electric-lighted, vacuum- 
cleaned, dumb-vvaitered and elevator-served apartments, 
and, of course, street cars. 

I had been investigating a large section of land de- 
voted to free (or practically free) municipal gardens for 
the poor, one of those socialistic experiments of Ger- 
many which, as is always the way, benefit the capable 
and leave the incapable just where they were before. 
As I emerged from a large area of such land divided into 
very small garden plots, I came across a little graveyard 
adjoining a small, neat, white concrete church where a 
German burial service was In progress. The burial 
ground was not significant or pretentious — a poor man's 
graveyard, that was plain. The little church was too 
small and too sectarian In Its mood, standing out In the 
wind and rain of an open common, to be of any social 
significance. Lutheran, I fancied. As I came up a little 
group of pall-bearers, very black and very solemn, were 
carrying a white satin-covered cofiin down a bare gravel 
path leading from the church door, the minister follow- 
ing, bareheaded, and after him the usual company of 
mourners In solemn high hats or thick black veils, the 
foremost — a mother and a remaining daughter I took 
them to be — sobbing bitterly. Just then six choristers 
In black frock coats and high hats, standing to one side 
of the gravel path like six blackbirds ranged on a fence, 
began to sing a German parting-song to the melody of 
" Home Sweet Home." The little white coffin, contain- 
ing presumably the body of a young girl, was put down 
by the grave while the song was completed and the minis- 
ter made a few consolatory remarks. 

I have never been able, quite, to straighten out for 
myself the magic of what followed — its stirring effect. 



THE NIGHT-LIFE OF BERLIN 485 

Into the hole o£ very yellow earth, cut through dead 
brown grass, the white coffin was lowered and then the 
minister stood by and held out first to the father and 
then to the mother and then to each of the others as they 
passed a small, white, ribbon-threaded basket containing 
broken bits of the yellow earth intermixed with masses 
of pink and red rose-leaves. As each sobbing person 
came forward he, or she, took a handful of earth and 
rose leaves and let them sift through his fingers to the 
coffin below. A lump rose in my throat and I hurried 
away. 



CHAPTER XLIX 

ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND 

I CAME near finding myself in serious straights 
financially on leaving Berlin ; for, owing to an over- 
sight, and the fact that I was lost in pleasant en- 
tertainment up to quite the parting hour, on examining 
my cash in hand I found I had only fifteen marks all told. 
This was Saturday night and my train was leaving in just 
thirty minutes. My taxi fare would be two marks. I had 
my ticket, but excess baggage ! — I saw that looming up 
largely. It could mean anything in Europe — ten, 
twenty, thirty marks. " Good Heavens ! " I thought. 
" Who is there to cash a letter of credit for me on Satur- 
day night?" I thought of porters, taxis, train hands 
at Amsterdam. "HI get there at all," I sighed, " I get 
there without a cent." For a minute I thought seriously 
of delaying my departure and seeking the aid of Herr 
A. However, I hurried on to the depot where I first had 
my trunk weighed and found that I should have to pay 
ten marks excess baggage. That was not so bad. My 
taxi chauffeur demanded two. My Packtrdger took one 
more, my parcel-room clerk, one mark in fees, leaving 
me exactly one mark and my letter of credit. " Good 
Heavens ! " I sighed. " I can see the expectant customs 
officers at the border! Without money I shall have to 
open every one of my bags. I can see the conductor ex- 
pecting four or five marks and getting nothing. I can 
see — oh. Lord ! " 

Still I did not propose to turn back, I did not have 
time. The clerk at the Amsterdam hotel would have 
to loan me money on my letter of credit. So I bustled 

486 



ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND 487 

ruminatively into the train. It was a long, dusty affair, 
coming from St. Petersburg and bound for Holland, 
Paris, and the boats for England. It was crowded with 
passengers but, thank Heaven, all of them safely be- 
stowed in separate compartments or " drawing-rooms " 
after the European fashion. I drew my blinds, un- 
dressed swiftly and got into bed. Let all conductors rage, 
I thought. Porters be damned. Frontier inspectors 
could go to blazes. I am going to sleep, my one mark 
in my coat pocket. 

I was just dozing off when the conductor called to ask 
if I did not want to surrender the keys to my baggage 
in order to avoid being waked in the morning at the 
frontier. This service merited a tip which, of course, 
I was in no position to give. " Let me explain to you," 
I said. " This is the way it is. I got on this train with 
just one mark." I tried to make it clear how it all hap- 
pened, in my halting German. 

He was a fine, tall, military, solid-chested fellow. He 
looked at me with grave, inquisitive eyes. " I will come 
in a little later," he grunted. Instead, he shook me 
rudely at five-thirty a. m., at some small place in Holland, 
and told me that I would have to go out and open my 
trunk. Short shrift for the man who cannot or will 
not tip! 

Still I was not so downcast. For one thing we were in 
Holland, actually and truly, — quaint little Holland with 
its five million population crowded into cities so close 
together that, you could get from one to another in a half- 
hour or a little over. To me, it was first and foremost 
the land of Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Ryn and 
that whole noble company of Dutch painters. All my 
life I had been more or less fascinated by those smooth 
surfaces, the spirited atmosphere, those radiant sim- 
plicities of the Dutch interiors, the village inns, wind- 



488 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

mills, canal scenes, housewives, fishwives, old topers, cat- 
tle, and nature scenes which are the basis and substance 
of Dutch art. I will admit, for argument's sake, that 
the Dutch costume with its snowy neck and head-piece 
and cuffs, the Dutch windmill, with its huge wind-bellied 
sails, the Dutch landscape so flat and grassy and the 
Dutch temperament, broad-faced and phlegmatic, have 
had much to do with my art attraction, but over and be- 
yond those there has always been so much more than this 
— an indefinable something which, for want of a better 
phrase, I can only call the wonder of the Dutch soul, the 
most perfect expression of commonplace beauty that the 
world has yet seen. So easily life runs off into the mys- 
tical, the metaphysical, the emotional, the immoral, the 
passionate and the suggestive, that for those delicate 
flaws of perfection in which life .is revealed static, quies- 
cent, undisturbed, innocently gay, naively beautiful, how 
can we be grateful enough! For those lovely, idyllic 
minds that were content to paint the receipt of a letter, 
an evening school, dancing peasants, a gust of wind, 
skaters, wild ducks, milk-time, a market, playing at 
draughts, the fruiterer, a woman darning stockings, a 
woman scouring, the drunken roysterers, a cow stall, cat 
and kittens, the grocer's shop, the chemist's shop, the 
blacksmith's shop, feeding-time, and the like, my heart 
has only reverence. And it is not (again) this choice of 
subject alone, nor the favorable atmosphere of Holland 
in which these were found, so much as it is that delicate 
refinement of soul, of perception, of feeling — the mira- 
cle of temperament — through which these things were 
seen. Life seen through a temperament! that is the 
miracle of art. 

Yet the worst illusion that can be entertained concern- 
ing art is that it is apt to appear at any time in any coun- 
try, through a given personality or a group of individuals 



ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND 489 

without any deep relation to much deeper mystical and 
metaphysical things. Some little suggestion of the art- 
istry of life may present itself now and then through a 
personality, but art in the truest sense is the substance of 
an age, the significance of a country — a nationality. 
Even more than that, it is a time-spirit (the Zeitgeist of 
the Germans) that appears of occasion to glorify a land, 
to make great a nation. You would think that some- 
where in the sightless substance of things — the chemis- 
try back of the material evidence of life — there was a 
lovely, roseate milling of superior principle at times. 
Strange and lovely things come to the fore — the restora- 
tion in England, the Renaissance in Italy, Florence's 
golden period, Holland's classic art — all done in a cen- 
tury. " And the spirit of God moved upon the face of 
the waters," and there was that which we know as art. 

I think it was years before those two towering figures 
— Rembrandt and Frans Hals (and of the two, Frans 
Hals is to me the greater) — appeared in my conscious- 
ness and emphasized the distinction of Holland for me, 
showing me that the loveliness of Dutch art, — the 
naivete of Wouverman, the poetic realism of Nicolaes 
Maes, the ultimate artistry of Vermeer, de Hoogh, Ruys- 
dael and all that sweet company of simple painters of 
simple things, — had finally come to mean to me all that 
/ can really hope for in art — those last final reflections 
of halcyon days which are the best that life has to show. 

Sometimes when I think of the homely splendors of 
Dutch art, which in its delicate commonplaceness has 
nothing to do with the more universal significance of 
i>oth Hals and Rembrandt, I get a little wild artistically. 
Those smooth persuasive surfaces — pure enamel — and 
symphonies of blue light which are Vermeer; those genial 
household intimacies and candle-light romances which 
are Dou; those alleluiahs of light and water which are 



490 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Vandervelde, Backhysen, Van Goyen; those merry- 
makings, perambulations, doorway chats, poultry inti- 
macies, small trade affections and exchanges which are 
Terburg and Van Ostade! Truly, words fail me. I 
do not know how to suggest the poetry, the realism, the 
mood, the artistic craftsmanship that go with these 
things. They suggest a time, a country, an age, a mood, 
which is at once a philosophy, a system, a spirit of life. 
What more can art be? What more can it suggest? 
How, in that fortune of chance, which combines it with 
color-sense, temperament, craft, can it be exceeded? 
And all of this is what Dutch art — those seemingly 
minor phases, after Hals and Rembrandt — means to 
me. 

But I was in Holland now, and not concerned so much 
for the moment with Dutch art as with my trunks. 
Still I felt here, at the frontier, that already I was in an 
entirely different world. Gone was that fever of the 
blood which is Germany. Gone the heavy, involute, en- 
during, Teutonic architecture. The upstanding German, 
• — kaiserlich, self-opinionated, drastic, aggressive — was 
no longer about me. The men who were unlocking 
trunks and bags here exemplified a softer, milder, less 
military type. This mystery of national temperaments 
— was I never to get done with it? As I looked about 
me against a pleasant rising Sunday sun I could see and 
feel that not only the people but the landscape and the 
architecture had changed. The architecture was ob- 
viously so different, low, modest, one-story cottages 
standing out on a smooth, green level land, so smooth 
and so green and so level that anything projected against 
the skyline — it mattered not how modest — thereby be- 
came significant. And I saw my first Holland windmill 
turning its scarecrow arms in the distance. It was like 
coming out of a Russian steam bath into the cool marble 



ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND 491 

precincts of the plunge, to be thus projected from Ger- 
many into Holland. If you will believe me I was glad 
that I had no money in order that I might be driven out 
to see all this. 

I had no trouble with trunks and bags other than open- 
ing them and being compelled to look as though I thought 
it a crime to tip anybody. I strolled about the station in 
the early light of a clear, soft clay and speculated on this 
matter of national temperaments. What a pity, I 
thought, if Holland were ever annexed by Germany or 
France or any country and made to modify its individu- 
ality. Before I was done with it I was inclined to be- 
lieve that its individuality would never be modified, come 
any authority that might. 

The balance of the trip to Amsterdam was nothing, a 
matter of two hours, but it visualized all I had fancied 
concerning Holland. Such a mild little land it is. So 
level, so smooth, so green. I began to puzzle out the signs 
along the way; they seemed such a hodge-podge of Ger- 
man and English badly mixed, that I had to laugh. The 
train passed up the center of a street in one village where 
cool brick pavements fronted cool brick houses and 
stores, and on one shop window appeared the legend: 
" Haar Sniden." Would not that as a statement of hair- 
cutting make any German- American laugh ? " Tele- 
foon," " stoom boot," " treins noor Ostend," " land te 
koop " (for sale) and the like brought a mild grin of 
amusement. 

When we reached Amsterdam I had scarcely time to 
get a sense of it before I was whisked away in an elec- 
tric omnibus to the hotel; and I was eager to get there, 
too, in order to replenish my purse which was now with- 
out a single penny. The last mark had gone to the 
porter at the depot to carry my bags to this 'bus. I was 



492 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

being deceived as to the character of the city by this ride 
from the central station to the hotel, for curiously its 
course gave not a glimpse of the canals that are the 
most charming and pleasing features of Amsterdam — 
more so than in any other city in Holland. 

And now what struggles for a little ready money! 
My bags and fur coat had been duly carried into the 
hotel and I had signified to the porter in a lordly way 
that he should pay the 'busman, but seeing that I had 
letters which might result in local invitations this very 
day a little ready cash was necessary. 

" I tell you what I should like you to do," I observed 
to the clerk, after I had properly entered my name and 
accepted a room. "Yesterday in Berlin, until it was 
too late, I forgot to draw any money on my letter of 
credit. Let me have forty gulden and I will settle with 
you in the morning." 

" But, my dear sir," he said, very doubtfully indeed 
and in very polite English, " I do not see how we can 
do that. We do not know^ you." 

" It is surely not sO' unusual," I suggested ingratiat- 
ingly, " you must have done it before. You see my 
bags and trunk are here. Here is my letter of credit. 
Let me speak to the manager." 

The dapper Dutchman looked at my fur coat and bags 
quite critically, looked at my letter O'f credit as if he felt 
sure it was a forgery and then retired into an inner office. 
Presently a polished creature appeared, dark, immaculate, 
and after eyeing me solemnly, shook his head. " It can't 
be done," he said. 
He turned tO' go. 

" But here, here ! " I called. " This won't do. You 
must be sensible. What sort of a hotel do you keep here, 
anyhow? I must have forty gulden — thirty, anyhow. 
My letter of credit is good. Examine it. Good heavens! 



ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND 493 

You have at least eight hundred gulden worth of lug- 
gage there." 

He had turned and was surveying me again. " It 
can't be done," he said. 

" Impossible ! " I cried. " I must have it. Why, I 
have n't a cent. You must trust me until to-morrow 
morning." 

" Give him twenty gulden," he said 10 the clerk, wear- 
ily, and turned away. 

" Good Heavens ! " I said to the clerk, " give me the 
twenty gulden before I die of rage." And so he counted 
them out to me and I went in to breakfast. 

I was charmed to find that the room overlooked one 
of the lovely canals with a distant view of others — all 
of them alive with canal-boats poled along slowdy by solid, 
placid Hollanders, the spring sunlight giving them a 
warm, alluring, mildly adventurous aspect. The sense 
of light on water was so delightful from the breakfast- 
room, a great airy place, that it gave an added flavor to 
my Sunday morning breakfast of eggs and bacon. I was 
so pleased with my general surroundings here that I even 
hummed a tune while I ate. 



CHAPTER L 

AMSTERDAM 

AMSTERDAM I should certainly include among 
my cities of light and charm, a place to live in. 
Not that it has, in my judgment, any of that 
capital significance of Paris or Rome or Venice. Though 
greater by a hundred thousand in population than Frank- 
fort, it has not even the forceful commercial texture of 
that place. The spirit of the city seemed so much more 
unbusinesslike, — so much slower and easier-going. Be- 
fore I sent forth a single letter of introduction I spent an 
entire day idling about its so often semicircular streets, 
following the canals which thread their centers like made 
pools, rejoicing in the cool brick walks which line the 
sides, looking at the reflection of houses and buildings 
in the ever-present water. 

Holland is obviously a land of canals and windmills, 
but much more than that it is a land of atmosphere. I 
have often speculated as to just what it is that the sea 
does to its children that marks them so definitely for its 
own. And here in Amsterdam the thought came to me 
again. It is this : Your waterside idler, whether he 
traverses the wide stretches of the ocean or remains at 
home near the sea, has a seeming vacuity or dreaminess 
of soul that no rush of ordinary life can disturb. I 
have noted it of every port of the sea, that the eager in- 
tensity of men so often melts away at the water's edge. 
Boats are not loaded with the hard realism that marks 
the lading of trains. A sense of the idle-devil-may-care 
indifference of water seems to play about the affairs of 
these people, of those who have to do with them — the 

494 



AMSTERDAM 495 

unhastening indifference of the sea. Perhaps the sugges- 
tion of the soundless, timeless, heartless deep that is 
in every channel, inlet, sluice, and dock-basin is the 
element that is at the base of their lagging motions. 
Your sailor and seafaring man will not hurry. His eyes 
are wide with a strange suspicion of the deep. He knows 
by contact what the subtlety and the fury of the w^aters 
are. The word of the sea is to be indifferent. " Never 
ycu mind, dearie. As it was in the beginning, so it ever 
shall be." 

I think the peace and sweetness of Amsterdam bear 
som.e relationship to this wonderful, soporific spirit of the 
endless deep. As I walked along these " grachts " and 
" kades " and through these " pleins " — seemingly 
enameled worlds in which water and trees and red brick 
houses swam in a soft light, exactly the light and atmos- 
phere you find in Dutch art — I felt as though I had come 
out of a hard modern existence such as one finds in Ger- 
many and back into something kindly, rural, intellectual, 
philosophic. Spinoza was, I believe, Holland's contribu- 
tion to philosophy, — and a worthy Dutch philosopher he 
was — and Erasmus its great scholar. Both Rembrandt 
and Frans Hals have indicated in their lives the spirit of 
their country. I think, if you could look into the spirits 
and homes of thousands of simple Hollanders, you would 
find that same kindly, cleanly realism which you admire 
in their paintings. . It is so placid. It was so here in 
Amsterdam. One gathered it from the very air. I had 
a feeling of peaceful, meditative delight in life and the 
simplicities of living all the time I was in Holland, which 
I take to be significant. All the while I was there I was 
wishing that I might remain throughout the spring and 
summer, and dream. In Germany I was haunted by the 
necessity of effort. 

It was while I was in Amsterdam this first morning 



496 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

that the realization that my travels were fast drawing to 
a close dawned upon me. I had been having such a good 
time! That fresh, interested feeling of something new 
to look forward to with each morning was still enduring; 
but now I saw that my splendid world of adventure was 
all but ended. Thoreau has proved, as I recalled now with 
some satisfaction, that life can be lived, with great in- 
tellectual and spiritual distinction in a meager way and 
in small compass, but oh, the wonder of the world's 
highways — the going to and fro amid the things of 
eminence and memory, seeing how, thus far, this wordly 
house of ours has been furnished by man and by nature. 

All those wonderful lands and objects that I had looked 
forward to with such keen interest a few months before 
were now in their way things of the past. England, 
France, Italy, Germany, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, 
Canterbury, Amiens, St. Peter's, Pisa — I could not look 
on those any more with fresh and wondering eyes. How 
brief life is, I thought! How taciturn in its mood! It 
gives us a brief sip, some of us, once and then takes the 
cup aw^ay. It seemed to me, as I sat here looking out on 
the fresh and sweet canals of Holland, that I could 
idle thus forever jotting down foolish impressions, 
exclaiming over fleeting phases of beauty, wiping my 
eyes at the hails and farewells that are so precious and 
so sad. Holland was before me, and Belgium, and one 
more sip of Paris, and a few days in England, perhaps, 
and then I should go back to New York to write. I could 
see it — New York with its high buildings, its clanging 
cars, its rough incivility. Oh, why might I not idle abroad 
indefinitely? 

The second morning of my arrival I received a tele- 
phone message from a sister of Madame A., Madame 
J., the wife of an eminent Dutch jurist who had some- 



AMSTERDAM 497 

thing to do with the International Peace Court. Would 
I come to lunch this day ? Her husband would be a little 
late, but I would not mind. Her sister had written her. 
She would be so glad to see me. I promptly accepted. 

The house was near the Ryks Museum, with a charm- 
ing view of water from the windows. I can see it now 
— this very pleasant Holland interior. The rooms into 
which I was introduced were bluish-gray in tone, the con- 
tents spare and in good taste. Flowers in abundance. 
Much brass and old copper. Madame J. was herself 
a study in steel blue and silver gray, a reserved yet tem- 
peramental woman. A better linguist than Madame A., 
she spoke English perfectly. She had read my book, the 
latest one, and had liked it, she told me. Then she folded 
her hands in her lap, leaned forward and looked at me. 
" I have been so curious to see what you looked like." 

" Well," I replied smilingly, " take a long look. I am 
not as wild as early rumors would indicate, I hope. You 
must n't start with prejudices." 

She smiled engagingly. " It is n't that. There are so 
many things in your book which make me curious. It is 
such a strange book — self-revealing, I imagine." 

" I would n't be too sure." 

She merely continued to look at me and smile in a 
placid way, but her inspection was so sympathetic and in 
a way alluring that it was rather flattering than otherwise. 
I, in turn, studied her. Here was a woman that, I had 
been told, had made an ideal marriage. And she obvi- 
ously displayed the quiet content that few achieve. 

Like Shakespeare, I would be the last one to admit 
an impediment to the marriage of true minds. Unques- 
tionably in this world in spite of endless liaisons, sex di- 
versions, divorces, marital conflicts innumerable, the right 
people do occasionally find each other. There are 



498 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

true chemical-physical affinities, which remain so until 
death and dissolution luido their mysterious spell. Yet, 
on the other hand, I should say this is the rarest of events 
and if I should try to formulate the mystery of the mari- 
tal trouble of this earth I should devote considerable per- 
centages to : a — ungovernable passion not willed or able 
to be controlled by the individual ; b — dull, thick-hided 
irresponsiveness which sees nothing in the emotional mood 
of another and knows no guiding impulse save self-inter- 
est and gluttony ; c — fickleness of that unreasoning, un- 
thinking character which is based on shallowness of soul 
and emotions — the pains resulting from such a state are 
negligible; d — diverging mental conceptions of life due 
to the hastened or retarded mental growth of one or the 
other of the high contracting parties; e — mistaken unions, 
wrong from the beginning, based on mistaken affections 
— cases where youth, inexperience, early ungovernable 
desire lead to a union based on sex and end, of course, 
in mental incompatibility ; f — a hounding compulsion 
to seek for a high spiritual and intellectual ideal which 
almost no individual can realize for another and which 
yet fuay be realized in a lightning flash, out of a clear 
sky, as it were. In which case the last two will nat- 
urally forsake all others and cleave only the one to the 
other. Such is sex's affection, mental and spiritual com- 
patibility. 

But in marriage, as in no other trade, profession, or 
contract, once a bargain is struck — a mistake made — 
society suggests that there is no solution save in death. 
You cannot back out. It is almost the only place where 
you cannot correct a mistake and start all over. Until 
death do us part! Think of that being written and ac- 
cepted of a mistaken marriage! My answer is that 
death would better hurry up. If the history of human 
marriage indicates anything, it is that the conditions which 



AMSTERDAM ' 499 

make for the union of two individuals, male and female, 
are purely fortuitous, that marriages are not made in 
heaven but in life's conditioning social laboratory, and 
that the marriage relation, as we understand it, is quite as 
much subject to modification and revision as anything 
else. Radical as it may seem, I predict a complete re- 
vision of the home standards as we know them. I would 
not be in the least surprised if the home, as we know it, 
were to disappear entirely. New, modifying conditions 
are daily manifesting themselves. Aside from easy di- 
vorce which is a mere safety valve and cannot safely (and 
probably will not) be dispensed with, there are other 
things which are steadily undermining the old home 
system as it has been practised. For instance, endless 
agencies which tend to influence, inspire, and direct the 
individual or child, entirely apart from the control and 
suggestion of parents, are now at work. In the rearing 
of the average child the influence of the average parent is 
steadily growing less. Intellectual, social, spiritual free- 
dom are constantly being suggested to the individual, but 
not by the home. People are beginning to see that they 
have a right to seek and seek until they find that which is 
best suited to their intellectual, physical, spiritual develop- 
ment, home or no home. No mistake, however great, 
or disturbing in its consequences, it is beginning to be 
seen, should be irretrievable. The greater the mistake, 
really, the easier it should be to right it. Society must 
and is opening the prison doors of human misery, and 
old sorrows are walking out into the sunlight where they 
are being dispelled and forgotten. As sure as there are 
such things as mental processes, spiritual affinities, sig- 
nificant individualities and as sure as these things are in- 
creasing in force, volume, numbers, so sure, also, is it that 
the marriage state and the sex relation with which these 
things are so curiously and indissolubly involved will be 



500 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

modified, given greater scope, greater ease of adjustment, 
greater simplicity of initiation, greater freedom as to 
duration, greater kindliness as to termination. And the 
state will guarantee the right, privileges and immunities 
of the children to the entire satisfaction of the state, the 
parents, axid the children. It cannot be otherwise. 

Mynheer J. joined us presently. He was rather 
spare, very waxy, very intellectual, very unattached philo- 
sophically — apparently — and yet very rigid in his feel- 
ing for established principle. The type is quite common 
among intellectuals. Much reading had not made him 
mad but a little pedantic. He was speculatively interested 
in international peace though he did not believe that it 
could readily be established. Much more, apparently, he 
was interested in the necessity of building up a code or 
body of international laws which would be flexible and 
binding on all nations. Imaginatively I could see him 
at his heavy tomes. He had thin, delicate, rather hand- 
some hands; a thin, dapper, wiry body. He was older 
than Madame J., — say fifty-five or sixty. He had 
nice, well-barbered, short gray whiskers, a short, effective 
mustache, loose, well-trained, rather upstanding hair. 
Some such intellectual Northman Ibsen intended to give 
Hedda. 



CHAPTER LI 

" SPOTLESS TOWN " 

AT three o'clock I left these pleasant people to visit 
the Ryks Museum and the next morning ran 
over to Haarlem, a half -hour away, to look at 
the Frans Hals in the Stadhuis. Haarlem was the city, 
I remember with pleasure, that once suffered the amazing 
tulip craze that swept over Holland in the sixteenth cen- 
tury — the city in which single rare tulips, like single 
rare carnations to-day, commanded enormous sums of 
money. Rare species, because of the value of the sub- 
sequent bulb sale, sold for hundreds of thousands of 
gulden. I had heard of the long line of colored tulip 
beds that lay between here and Haarlem and The Hague 
and I was prepared to judge for myself whether they 
were beautiful — as beautiful as the picture post-cards 
sold everywhere indicated. I found this so, but even 
more than the tulip beds I found the country round about 
from Amsterdam to Haarlem, The Hague and Rotter- 
dam delightful. I traveled by foot and by train, passing 
by some thirty miles of vari-colored flower-beds in blocks 
of red, white, blue, purple, pink, and yellow, that lie be- 
tween the several cities. I stood in the old Groote Kerk 
of St. Bavo in Haarlem, the Groote Kerk of St. James in 
The Hague — both as bare of ornament as an anchorite's 
cell — I wandered among the art treasures of the Ryks 
Museum in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis and the Mes- 
dag Museum in The Hague; I walked in the forests of 
moss-tinted trees at Haarlem and again at The Hague; 
my impression was that compact little Holland had all 

SOI 



# 



502 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

the charm of a great private estate, beautifully kept and 
intimately delightful. 

But the canals of Holland — what an airy impression 
of romance, of pure poetry, they left on my mind ! There 
are certain visions or memories to which the heart of every 
individual instinctively responds. The canals of Holland 
are one such to me. I can see them now, in the early 
morning, when the sun was just touching them with the 
faintest pearls, pinks, lavenders, blues, their level sur- 
faces as smooth as glass, their banks rising no whit above 
the level of the water, but lying even with it like a black 
or emerald frame, their long straight lines broken at one 
point or another by a low brown or red or drab cottage or 
windmill! I can see them again at evening, the twilight 
hour, when in that poetically suffused mood of nature, 
which obtains then, they lie, liquid masses of silver, a 
shred of tinted cloud reflected in their surface, the level 
green grass turning black about them, a homing bird, a 
mass of trees in the distance, or humble cottage, its win- 
dows faintly gold from within, lending those last touches 
of artistry which make the perfection of nature. As in 
London and Venice the sails of their boats were colored 
a soft brown, and now and again one appeared in the fad- 
ing light, a healthy Hollander smoking his pipe at the 
tiller, a cool wind fanning his brow. The world may 
hold more charming pictures but I have not encountered 
them. 

And across the level spaces of lush grass that seemingly 
stretch unbroken for miles — bordered on this side or that 
with a little patch of filigree trees; ribboned and seg- 
mented by straight silvery threads of water; ornamented 
in the foreground by a cow or two, perhaps, or a boat- 
man steering his motor-power canal boat ; remotely ended 
by the seeming outlines of a distant city, as delicately 
penciled as a line by Vierge — stand the windmills. I 




" SPOTLESS TOWN " 503 

have seen ten, twelve, fifteen, marching serenely across 
the fields in a row, of an afternoon, like great, heavy, fat 
Dutchmen, their sails going in slow, patient motions, their 
great sides rounding out like solid Dutch ribs, — naive, 
delicious things. There were times when their outlines 
took on classic significance. Combined with the utterly 
level land, the canals and the artistically martialed trees, 
they constitute the very atmosphere of Holland. 

Haarlem, when I reached it, pleased me almost as much 
as Amsterdam, though it had no canals to speak of — by 
comparison. It was so clean and fresh and altogether 
lovely. It reminded me of Spotless Tozvn — the city of 
advertising fame — and I was quite ready to encounter 
the mayor, the butcher, the doctor and other worthies of 
that ultra-respectable city. Coming over from Amster- 
dam, I saw a little Dutch girl in wooden shoes come down 
to a low gate which opened directly upon a canal and dip 
up a pitcher of water. That was enough to key up my 
mood to the most romantic pitch. I ventured forth right 
gaily in a warm spring sun and spent the better portion 
of an utterly delightful day idling about its streets and 
museums. 

Haarlem, to me, aside from the tulip craze, was where 
Frans Hals lived and where in 1610, when he was thirty 
years of age, he married and where six years later he was 
brought before the Burgomaster for ill-treating his wife, 
and ordered to abstain from " dronken schnappe." Poor 
Frans Hals! The day I was there a line of motor-cars 
stood outside the Stadhuis waiting while their owners 
contemplated the wonders of the ten Regents pictures in- 
side which are the pride of Haarlem. When I left Lon- 
don Sir Scorp was holding his recently discovered por- 
trait by Hals at forty thousand pounds or more. I fancy 
to-day any of the numerous portraits by Hals in his best 



504 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

manner would bring two hundred thousand dollars and 
very likely much more. Yet at seventy-two Hals's goods 
and chattels — three mattresses, one chair, one table, 
three bolsters, and five pictures — were sold to satisfy 
a baker's bill, and from then on, until he died ■ fourteen 
years later, at eighty-six, his " rent and firing " were paid 
for by the municipality. Fate probably saved a very 
great artist from endless misery by letting his first wife 
die. As it was he appears to have had his share of 
wretchedness. 

The business of being really great Is one of the most 
pathetic things in the world. When I was in London a 
close friend of Herbert Spencer told me the story of his 
last days, and how, save for herself, there was scarcely 
any one to cheer him in his loneliness. It was not that 
he lacked living means — he had that — but living as he 
did, aloft in the eternal snows of speculation, there was 
no one to share his thoughts, — no one. It was the fate 
of that gigantic mind to be lonely. What a pity the 
pleasures of the bottle or a drug might not eventually 
have allured him. Old Omar knew the proper antidote 
for these speculative miseries. 

And Rembrandt van Ryn — there was another. It is 
probably true that from 1606, when he was born, until 
1634, when he married at twenty-eight, he was gay 
enough. He had the delicious pleasure of discovering 
that he was an artist. Then he married Saskia van 
Uylenborch — the fair Saskia whom he painted sitting so 
gaily on his knee — and for eight years he was probably 
supremely happy. Saskia had forty thousand gulden to 
contribute to this menage. Rembrandt's skill and fame 
were just attaining their most significant proportions, 
when she died. Then, being an artist, his affairs went 
from bad to worse; and you have the spectacle of this 
other seer, Holland's metaphysician, color-genius, life- 



*' SPOTLESS TOWN " 505 

Interpreter, descending to an entanglement with a rather 
dull housekeeper, losing his money, having all his pos- 
sessions sold to pay his debts and living out his last days 
in absolute loneliness at the Keizerskroon Inn in Amster- 
dam — quite neglected; for the local taste for art had 
changed, and the public was a little sick of Hals and 
Rembrandt. 

As I sat in the Kroon restaurant, in Haarlem, opposite 
the Groote Kerk, watching some pigeons fly about the 
belfry, looking at Lieven de Key's meat market, the 
prototype of Dutch quaintness, and meditating on the 
pictures of these great masters that I had just seen in the 
Stadhuis, the insignificance of the individual as compared 
with the business of life came to me with overwhelming 
force. We are such minute, dusty insects at best, great 
or small. The old age of most people is so trivial and 
insignificant. We become mere shells — " granthers," 
" Goody Two-Shoes," " lean and slippered pantaloons." 
The spirit of life works in masses — not individuals. It 
prefers a school or species to a single specimen. A 
great man or woman is an accident. A great work of 
art of almost any kind is almost always fortuitous ■ — • 
like this meat market over the way. Life, for instance, I 
speculated sitting here, cared no more for Frans Hals 
or Rembrandt or Lieven de Key than I cared for the 
meanest butcher or baker of their day. If they chanced 
to find a means of subsistence — well and good; if not, 
well and good also. " Vanity, vanity, saith the preacher, 
all is vanity." Even so. 

From Haarlem I went on to The Hague, about fifty 
minutes away ; from The Hague, late that evening, to Rot- 
terdam; from Rotterdam to Dordrecht, and so into Bel- 
gium, where I was amused to see everything change 
again — the people, language, signs, — all. Belgium ap- 
peared to be French, with only the faintest suggestion of 



5o6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

Holland about it — but it was different enough from 
France also to be interesting on its own account. 

After a quick trip across Belgium with short but de- 
lightful stops at Bruges, that exquisite shell of a once 
great city, at Ghent and at Brussels, the little Paris, I 
arrived once more at the French capital. 



CHAPTER LII 

PARIS AGAIN 

ONCE I was in Paris again. It was delightful, 
for now it was spring, or nearly so, and the 
weather was pleasant. People were pouring 
into the city in droves from all over the world. It was 
nearly midnight when I arrived. My trunk, which I 
had sent on ahead, was somewhere in the limbo of ad- 
vance trunks and I had a hard time getting it. Parisian 
porters and depot attendants know exactly when to lose 
all understanding of English and all knowledge of the 
sign language. It is when the search for anything be- 
comes the least bit irksome. The tip they expect to 
get from you spurs them on a little way, but not very 
far. Let them see that the task promises to be somewhat 
wearisome and they disappear entirely. I lost two fac- 
teurs in this way, when they discovered that the trunk 
was not ready to their hand, and so I had to turn in and 
search among endless trunks myself. When I found it, a 
facteur was quickly secured to truck it out to a taxi. And, 
not at all wonderful to relate, the first man I had employed 
now showed up to obtain his ponrhoire. " Oh, here you 
are ! " I exclaimed, as I was getting into my taxi. " Well, 
you can go to the devil ! " He pulled a long face. That 
much English he knew. 

When I reached the hotel in Paris I found Barfleur 
registered there but not yet returned to his room. But 
several letters of complaint were awaiting me: Why 
had n't I telegraphed the exact hour of my arrival ; why 
had n't I written fully ? It was n't pleasant to wait in 
uncertainty. If I had only been exact, several things 

507 



5o8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

could have been arranged for this day or evening. While 
I was meditating on my sins of omission and commission, 
a chasseur bearing a note arrived. Would I dress and 
come to G.'s Bar. He would meet me at twelve. This 
was Saturday night, and it would be good to look over 
Paris again. I knew what that meant. We would leave 
the last restaurant in broad daylight, or at least the 
Paris dawn. 

Coming down on the train from Brussels I had fallen 
into a blue funk — a kind of mental miasma — one of 
the miseries Barfleur never indulged in. They almost de- 
stroy me. Barfleur never, in so far as I could see, suc- 
cumbed to the blues. In the first place my letter of credit 
was all but used up — my funds were growing terrify- 
ingly low; and it did not make me any more cheerful to 
realize that my journey was now practically at an end. A 
few more days and I would be sailing for home. 

When, somewhat after twelve, I arrived at G.'s 
Bar I was still a little doleful. Barfleur was there. He 
had just come in. That indescribable Parisian tension — 
that sense of life at the topmost level of nervous strength 
and energy — was filling this little place. The same red- 
jacketed musicians; the same efficient, inconspicuous, at- 
tentive and courteous waiters; Madame G., placid, 
philosophic, comfy, businesslike and yet motherlike, was 
going to and fro, pleasingly arrayed, looking no doubt 
after the interests, woes, and aspirations of her company 
of very, very bad but beautiful " girls." The walls were 
lined with life-loving patrons of from twenty-five to fifty 
years of age, with their female companions. Barfleur 
was at his best. He was once more in Paris — his beloved 
Paris. He beamed on me in a cheerful, patronizing way. 

" So there you are ! The Italian bandits did n't way- 
lay you, even if they did rob you, I trust? The German 
Empire didn't sit too heavily on you? Holland and 



i 



PARIS AGAIN 509 

Switzerland must have been charming as passing pic- 
tures. Where did you stop in Amsterdam ? " 

" At the Amstel." 

" Quite right. An excellent hotel. I trust Madame 
A. was nice to you ? " 

" She was as considerate as she could be." 

" Right and fitting. She should have been. I saw 
that you stopped at the National, in Lucerne. That is 
one of the best hotels in Europe. I was glad to see that 
your taste in hotels was not falling off." 

We began with appetizers, some soup, and a light wine. 
I gave a rough summary of some things I had seen, and 
then we came to the matter of my sailing date and a pro- 
posed walking trip in England. 

" Now, I '11 tell you what I think we should do and then 
you can use your own judgment," suggested Barfleur. 
" By the time we get to London, next Wednesday or 
Tuesday, England will be in prime condition. The coun- 
try about Dorchester will be perfect. I suggest that we 
take a week's walk, anyway. You come to Bridgely 
Level — it is beautiful there now — and stay a week or 
ten days. I should like you to see how charming it is 
about my place in the spring. Then we will go to Dor- 
chester. Then you can come back to Bridgely Level. 
Why not stay in England and write this summer? " 

I put up a hand in serious opposition. " You know I 
can't do that. Why, if I had so much time, we might as 
well stay over here and settle down in — well, Fontaine- 
bleau. Besides, money is a matter of prime considera- 
tion with me. I 've got to buckle down to work at once 
at anything that will make me ready money. I think in 
all seriousness I had best drop the writing end of the lit- 
erary profession for a while anyway and return to the 
editorial desk." 

The geniality and romance that lightened Barfleur's eye, 



510 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

as he thought of the exquisite beauty of England in the 
spring, faded, and his face became unduly severe. 

" Really," he said, with a grand air, " you discourage 
me. At times, truly, I am inclined to quit. You are a 
man, in so far as I can see, with absolutely no faith in 
yourself — a man without a profession or an appropriate 
feeling for his craft. You are inclined, on the slightest 
provocation, to give up. You neither save anything over 
from yesterday in the shape of satisfactory reflection nor 
look into the future with any optimism. Do, I beg of 
you, have a little faith in the future. Assume that a day 
is a day, wherever it is, and that so long as it is not in the 
past it has possibilities. Here you are a man of forty; 
the formative portion of your life is behind you. Your 
work Is all indicated and before you. Public faith such 
as my own should have some weight with you and yet 
after a tour of Europe, such as you would not have rea- 
sonably contemplated a year ago, you sink down supinely 
and talk of quitting. Truly it is too much. You make me 
feel very desperate. One cannot go on in this fashion. 
You must cultivate some intellectual stability around 
which your emotions can center and settle to anchor." 

" Fairest Barfleur," I replied, " how you preach ! You 
have real oratorical ability at times. There is much in 
what you say. I should have a profession, but we are 
looking at life from slightly different points of view. 
You have in your way a stable base, financially speaking. 
At least I assume so. I have not. My outlook, outside 
of the talent you are inclined to praise, is not very en- 
couraging. It is not at all sure that the public will mani- 
fest the slightest interest in me from now on. If I had 
a large bump of vanity and the dull optimism of the un- 
imaginative, I might assume anything and go gaily on 
until I was attacked somewhere for a board bill. Un- 
fortunately I have not the necessary thickness of hide. 



PARIS AGAIN 511 

And I sujffer periods of emotional disturbance such as do 
not appear to afflict you. If you want to adjust my artis- 
tic attitude so nicely, contemplate my financial state first 
and see if that does not appeal to you as having some 
elements capable of disturbing my not undue proportion 
of equanimity." We then went into actual figures from 
which to his satisfaction he deducted that, with ordinary 
faith in myself, I had no real grounds for distress, and I 
from mine figured that my immediate future was quite 
as dubious as I had fancied. It did not appear that I was 
to have any money when I left England. Rather I was 
to draw against my future and trust that my innate capa- 
bilities would see me through. 

It was definitely settled at this conference that I was 
not to take the long-planned walking tour in the south 
of England, lovely as it would be, but instead, after three 
or four days in Paris and three or four days in London, 
I was to take a boat sailing from Dover about the mid- 
dle of April or a little later which would put me in New 
York before May. This agreed we returned to our pleas- 
ures and spent three or four very delightful days to- 
gether. 

It is written of Hugo and Balzac that they always 
looked upon Paris as the capital of the world. I 
am afraid I shall have to confess to a similar feeling 
concerning New York. I know it all so well — its 
splendid water spaces, its magnificent avenues, its 
varying sections, the rugged splendor of its clifflike struc- 
tures, the ripping force of its tides of energy and life. 
Viewing Europe from the vantage point of the seven 
countries I had seen, I was prepared to admit that in so 
many ways we are, temperamentally and socially speak- 
ing, the rawest of raw material. No one could be more 
crude, more illusioned than the average American. Con- 
trasted with the sarooir faire, the life understanding, the 



512 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

philosophic acceptance of definite conditions in nature, 
the Europeans are immeasurably superior. They are 
harder, better trained, more settled in the routine of 
things. The folderols of romance, the shibboleths of 
politics and religion, the false standards of social and com- 
mercial supremacy are not so readily accepted there as 
here. Ill-founded aspiration is not so rife there as here : 
every Jack does not consider himself, regardless of quali- 
fications, appointed by God to tell his neighbor how he 
shall do and live. But granting all this, America, and 
particularly New York, has to me the most cpmforting at- 
mosphere of any. The subway is like my library table — 
it is so much of an intimate. Broadway is the one idling 
show place. Neither the Strand nor the Boulevard des 
Capucines can replace it. Fifth Avenue is all that it 
should be — the one really perfect show street of the 
world. All in all the Atlantic metropolis is the first city 
in the world to me, — first in force, unrivaled in individu- 
ality, richer and freer in its spirit than London or Paris, 
though so often more gauche, more tawdry, more sham- 
blingly inexperienced. 

As I sat in Madame G.'s Bar, the pull of the city over- 
seas was on me — and that in the spring ! I wanted 
to go home. 

We talked of the women we had got to know in 
Paris — of Marcelle and Madame de B. — and other fig^ 
ures lurking in the background of this brilliant city. 
But Marcelle would expect a trip to Fontainebleau and 
Madame de B. was likely to be financially distressed. 
This cheerful sort of companionship would be expensive. 
Did I care to submit to the expense? I did not. I felt 
that I could not. So for once we decided to be modest 
and go out and see what we could see alone. Our indi- 
vidual companionship was for the time-being sufficient. 

Barfleur and I truly kept step with Paris these early 



PARIS AGAIN 513 

spring days. This first night together we revisited all 
our favorite cafes and restaurants — Fysher's Bar, the 

Rat Mort, C 's Bar, the Abbaye Theleme, Maxim's, 

the American, Paillard's and the like, — and this, I soon 
realized : without a keen sex interest — the companion- 
ship of these high-voltage ladies of Paris — I can im- 
agine nothing duller. It becomes a brilliant but hollow 
spectacle. 

The next day was Sunday. It was warm and sunny 
as a day could be. The air was charged with a kind of 
gay expectation. Barfleur had discovered a neo-impres- 
sionist portraitist of merit, one Hans Bols, and had 
agreed to have his portrait done by him. This Sunday 
morning was the first day for a series of three sittings ; so 
I left him and spent a delicious morning in the Bois. 
Paris in spring ! The several days — from Saturday to 
Wednesday — were like a dream. A gay world — full of 
the subtleties of social ambition, of desire, fashion, love- 
making, and all the keenest, shrewdest aspects of life. 
It was interesting, at the Cafe Madrid and The Elysee, to 
sit out under trees and the open sky and see an uninter- 
rupted stream of automobiles and taxis pouring up, de- 
positing smart-looking people all glancing keenly about, 
nodding to friends, now cordially, now tentatively, in a 
careful, selective social way. 

One evening after I returned from a late ramble alone, 
I found on my table a note from Barfleur, " For God's 
sake, if you get this in time, come at once to the Abbaye 
Theleme. I am waiting for you with a Mrs. L., who 
wants to meet you." So I had to change to evening 
clothes at one-thirty in the morning. And it was the 
same old thing when I reached there — waiters tumbling 
over one anothei" with their burdens of champagne, fruit, 
ices, confitures; the air full of colored glucose balls, col- 
ored balloons floating aloft, endless mirrors reflecting a 



514 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

giddy panorama, white arms, white necks, animated faces, 
snowy shirt bosoms — the old story. Spanish dancers 
in ghttering scales, American negroes in evening clothes 
singing coon songs, excited life-lovers, male and female, 
dancing erotically in each other's arms. Can it be, I 
asked myself, that this thing goes on night after night 
and year after year? Yet it was obvious that it did. 

The lady in question was rather remote — as an Eng- 
lish-woman can be. I 'm sure she said to hereslf, " This 
is a very dull author." But I could n't help it. She 
froze my social sense into icy crystals of " yes " and 
" no." We took her home presently and continued our 
rounds till the wee sma' hours. 



CHAPTER LIII 

THE VOYAGE HOME 

THE following Wednesday Barflenr and I re- 
turned to London via Calais and Dover. We 
had been, between whiles, to the races at Long- 
champs, luncheons at Au Pere Boivin, the Pre Catalan, 
and elsewhere. I had finally looked up Marcelle, but the 
concierge explained that she was out of town. 

In spite of the utter fascination of Paris I was not at 
all sorry to leave, for I felt that to be happy here one 
would want a more definite social life and a more fixed 
habitation than this hotel and the small circle of people 
that we had met could provide. I took a last — almost 
a yearning — look at. the Avenue de I'Opera and the Gare 
du Nord and then we were off. 

England was softly radiant in her spring dress. The 
leaves of the trees between Dover and London were just 
budding, that diaphanous tracery which resembles green 
lace. The endless red chimneys and sagging green roofs 
and eaves of English cottages peeping out from this ves- 
ture of spring were as romantic and poetic as an old 
English ballad. No doubt at all that England — the 
south of it, anyhow — is in a rut; sixty years behind the 
times, — but what a rut ! Must all be new and polished 
and shiny? As the towers and spires of Canterbury sped 
past to the right, gray and crumbling in a winelike air, 
something rose in my throat. I thought of that old 
English song that begins — 

" When shepherds pipe on oaten straws — " 

And then London once more and all the mystery of 
endless involute streets and simple, hidden, unexplored 

51S 



5i6 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

regions ! I went once more to look at the grim, sad, two- 
story East End in spring. It was even more pathetic for 
being touched by the caressing hand of Nature. I went 
to look at Hyde Park and Chelsea and Seven Kings. I 
thought to visit Sir Scorp — to cringe once more before 
the inquiring severity of his ascetic eye; but I did not 
have time, as things turned out. Barfleur was insistent 
that I should spend a day or two at Bridgely Level. Ow- 
ing to a great coal strike the boat I had planned to take 
was put out of commission and I was compelled to ad- 
vance my sailing date two days on the boat of another 
line. And now I was to see Bridgely Level once more, 
in the spring. 

After Italy and Holland, perhaps side by side with 
Holland or before it, England — the southern portion 
of it — is the most charmingly individual country in 
Europe. For the sake of the walk, the evening was so 
fine, we decided to leave the train at Maidenhead and 
walk the remaining distance, some five or six miles. It 
was ideal. The sun was going down and breaking 
through diaphanous clouds in the west, which it tinted 
and gilded. The English hedges and copses were deli- 
cately tinted with new life. English robins were on the 
grass ; sheep, cows ; over one English hamlet and another 
smoke was curling and English crows or rooks were gaily 
cawing, cheered at the thought of an English spring. 

As gay as children, Barfleur and I trudged the yellow 
English road. Now and then we passed through a stile 
and cut diagonally across a field where a path was laid for 
the foot of man. Every so often we met an English 
laborer, his trousers gripped just below the knee by the 
customary English strap. Green and red; green and 
red; (such were the houses and fields) with new spring 
violets, apple trees in blossom, and peeping steeples over 
sloping hillsides thrown in for good measure. I felt — 



THE VOYAGE HOME 517 

what shall I say I felt? — not the grandeur of Italy, but 
something so delicate and tender, so reminiscent and aro- 
matic — ' faintly so — of other days and other fames, that 
my heart was touched as by music. Near Bridgely Level 
we encountered Wilkins going home from his work, a 
bundle of twigs under his arm, a pruning hook at his belt, 
his trousers strapped after the fashion of his class. 

" Well, Wilkins ! " I exclaimed. 

" W'y, 'ow do you do, sir, Mr. Dreiser? Hi'm glad 
to see you again, Hi am," touching his cap. " Hi 'opes 
as 'ow you 've had a pleasant trip." 

" Very, Wilkins, very," I replied grandiosely. Who 
cannot be grandiose in the presence of the fixed conditions 
of old England. I asked after his work and his health 
and then Barfleur gave him some instructions for the mor- 
row. We went on in a fading light — an English twi- 
light. And when we reached the country house it was 
already aglow in anticipation of this visit. Hearth fires 
were laid. The dining-room, reception-hall, and living- 
room were alight. Dora appeared at the door, quite as 
charming and rosy in her white apron and cap as the day 
I left, but she gave no more sign that I was strange or 
had been absent than as if I had not been away. 

" Now we must make up our minds what particular 
wines we want for dinner. I have an excellent cham- 
pagne of course; but how about a light Burgundy or a 
Rhine wine? I have an excellent Assmanshauser." 

" I vote for the light Burgundy," I said. 

" Done. I will speak to Dora now." 

And while he went to instruct Dora, I went to look 
after all my belongings in order to bring them finally to- 
gether for my permanent departure. After a delicious 
dinner and one of those comfortable, reminiscent talks 
that seem naturally to follow the end of the day, I went 
early to bed. 



5i8 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

When the day came to sail I was really glad to be go- 
ing home, although on the way I had quarreled so much 
with my native land for the things which it lacks and 
which Europe apparently has. 

Our boasted democracy has resulted in little more than 
the privilege every living, breathing American has of 
being rude and brutal to every other, but it is not be- 
yond possibility that sometime as a nation we will sober 
down into something approximating human civility. 
Our early revolt against sham civility has, in so far as 
I can see, resulted in nothing save the abolition of 
all civility — ^ which is sickening. Life, I am sure, will 
shame us out of it eventually. We will find we do not 
get anywhere by it. And I blame it all on the lawless- 
ness of the men at the top. They have set the example 
which has been most freely copied. 

Still, I was glad to be going home. 

When the time came the run from London to Folk- 
stone and Dover was pleasant with its fleeting glimpses 
of the old castle at Rochester and the spires of the cathe- 
dral at Canterbury, the English orchards, the slopes 
dotted with sheep, the nestled chimneys and the occa- 
sional quaint, sagging roofs of moss-tinted tiles. The 
conductor who had secured me a compartment to myself 
appeared just after we left Folkstone to tell me not to 
bother about my baggage, saying that I would surely 
find it all on the dock when I arrived to take the boat. 
It was exactly as he said, though having come this way I 
found two transfers necessary. Trust the English to 
be faithful. It is the one reliable country in which you 
may travel. At Dover I meditated on how thoroughly 
my European days were over and when, if ever, I should 
come again. Life offers so much to see and the human 
span is so short that it is a question whether it is advisa- 
ble ever to go twice to the same place — a serious ques- 



THE VOYAGE HOME 519 

tion. If I had my choice, I decided — as I stood and 
looked at the blue bay of Dover — I would, if I could, 
spend six months each year in the United States and 
then choose Paris as my other center and from there fare 
forth as I pleased. 

After an hour's wait at Dover, the big liner dropped 
anchor in the roadstead and presently the London pas- 
sengers were put on board and we were under way. 
The Harbor was lovely in a fading light — chalk-blue 
waters, tall whitish cliffs, endless squealing, circling gulls, 
and a bugle calling from the fort in the city. 

Our ship's captain was a Christian Scientist, believing 
in the nothingness of matter, the immanence of Spirit or 
a divine idea, yet he was, as events proved, greatly dis- 
tressed because of the perverse, undismissable presence 
and hauntings of mortal thought. He had " beliefs " con- 
cerning possible wrecks, fires, explosions — the usual 
terrors of the deep, and one of the ship's company (our 
deck-steward) told me that whenever there was a fog 
he was always on the bridge, refusing to leave it and that 
he was nervous and " as cross as hell." So you can 
see how his religious belief squared with his chemical 
intuitions concerning the facts of life. A nice, healthy, 
brisk, argumentative, contentious individual he was, and 
very anxious to have the pretty women sit by him at 
dinner. 

The third day we were out news came by wireless 
that the Titanic had sunk after collision with an iceberg 
in mid-ocean. The news had been given in confidence 
to a passenger. And this passenger had " in confidence " 
told others. It was a terrible piece of news, grim in its 
suggestion, and when it finally leaked out it sent a chill 
over all on board. I heard it first at nine o'clock at 
night. A party of us were seated in the smoking-room, 



520 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

a most comfortable retreat from the terrors of the night 
and the sea. A damp wind had arisen, bringing with it 
the dreaded fog. Sometimes I think the card room is 
sought because it suggests the sea less than any place 
else on the ship. The great fog-horn began mooing like 
some vast Brobdingnagian sea-cow wandering on endless 
watery pastures. The passengers were gathered here 
now in groups where, played upon by scores of lights, 
served with drinks and reacted upon, one by the moods 
of the others, a temperamental combustion took place 
which served to dispel their gloom. Yet it was not pos- 
sible entirely to keep one's mind off the slowing down 
of the ship, the grim moo of the horn, and the sound 
of long, swishing breakers outside speaking of the im- 
mensity of the sea, its darkness, depth, and terrors. 
Every now and then, I noticed, some one would rise and 
go outside to contemplate, no doubt, the gloominess of 
it all. There is nothing more unpromising to this little 
lamp, the body, than the dark, foggy waters of a mid- 
night sea. 

One of the passengers, a German, came up to our table 
with a troubled, mysterious air. " I got sumpin' to tell 
you, gentlemen," he said in a stage whisper, bending 
over us. " You better come outside where the ladies 
can't hear." ( There were several in the room. ) " I just 
been talkin' to the wireless man upstairs." 

We arose and followed him out on deck. 

The German faced us, pale and trembling. " Gentle- 
men," he said, " the captain 's given orders to keep it 
a secret until we reach New York. But I got it straight 
from the wireless man: The Titanic went down last 
night with nearly all on board. Only eight hundred saved 
and two thousand drowned. She struck an iceberg off 
Newfoundland. You, gentlemen, must promise me not 
to tell the ladies — otherwise I shutt n't have told you. 



I 



THE VOYAGE HOME 521 

I promised the man up-stairs. It might get him in 
trouble." 

We promised faithfully. And with one accord we 
went to the rail and looked out into the blackness ahead. 
The swish of the sea could be heard and the insistent 
moo of the fog-horn, 

" And this is only Tuesday," suggested one. His face 
showed a true concern. " We 've got a week yet on the 
sea, the way they will run now. And we have to go 
through that region — maybe over the very spot — " 

He took off his cap and scratched his hair in a foolish, 
thoughtful way. I think we all began to talk at once, 
but no one listened. The terror of the sea had come 
swiftly and directly home to all. I am satisfied that 
there was not a man of all the company who heard with- 
out feeling a strange sensation. To think of a ship 
as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking 
in endless fathoms of water. And the two thousand 
passengers routed like rats from their berths only to 
float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying! 

I went to my berth thinking of the pains and terrors 
of those doomed two thousand, a great rage in my heart 
against the fortuity of life — the dullness or greed of 
man that prevents him from coping with it. For an hour 
or more I listened tO' the vibration of the ship that trem- 
bled at times like a spent animal as a great wave struck 
at it with smashing force. 

It was a trying night. 

I found by careful observation of those with me that 
I was not the only one subject to disquieting thoughts. 
Mr. W., a Chicago beef man, pleased me most, for 
he was so frank in admitting his inmost emotions. He 
was a vigorous young buck, frank and straightforward. 
He came down to breakfast the next morning looking a 
little dull. The sun was out and it was a fine day. 



522 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

" You know," he confided genially, " I dreamed of them 
poor devils all night. Say — out in the cold there ! And 
then those big waves kept hitting the ship and waking 
me up. Did you hear that smash in the night? I 
thought we had struck something. I got up once and 
looked out but that did n't cheer me any. I could only 
see the top of a roller now and then going by." 

Another evening, sitting in the deepest recesses of the 
card room he explained that he believed in good and 
bad spirits and the good spirits could help you " if they 
wanted to." 

Monsieur G., a Belgian, doing business in New York, 
was nervous in a subdued, quiet way. He never ceased 
commenting on the wretchedness of the catastrophe, nor 
did he fail daily to consult the chart of miles made and 
course traveled. He predicted that we would turn south 
before we neared the Grand Banks because he did not 
believe the captain would " take a chance." I am sure he 
told his wife and that she told every other woman, for 
the next day one of them confided to me that she knew, 
and that she had been " stiff with fear " all the night 
before. 

An Englishman, who was with us making for Calgary 
gave no sign, one way or the other. The German who 
first brought us the news was like a man with a mania ; he 
talked of it all the time. An American judge on board 
talked solemnly with all who would listen — a hard crab 
of a man, whose emotions found their vent in the business 
of extracting information. The women talked to each 
other but pretended not to know. 

It took three days of more or less pleasant sailing to 
relax the tension which pervaded the whole vessel. The 
captain did not appear again at table for four days. On 
Wednesday, following the Monday of the wreck, there 
was a fire drill — that ominous clanging of the fire-beU 



THE VOYAGE HOME 523 

on the forward deck which brought many troubled spec- 
tators out of their staterooms and developed the fact that 
every piece of hose employed was rotten; for every piece 
put under pressure burst — a cheering exhibition ! 

But as the days passed we began to take heart again. 
The philosophers of the company were unanimously 
agreed that as the Titanic had suffered this great disaster 
through carelessness on the part of her officers, no 
doubt our own chances of safely reaching shore were 
thereby enhanced. We fell to gambling again, to flirting, 
to playing shuffle-board. By Saturday, when we were 
passing in the vicinity of where the Titanic went down, 
only much farther to the south, our fears had been prac- 
tically dispelled. 

It was not until we reached Sandy Hook the following 
Tuesday — a hard, bright, clear, blowy day, that we 
really got the full story. The customary pilot was taken 
on there, out of a thrashing sea, his overcoat pockets 
bulging with papers, all flaring with headlines describing 
the disaster. We crowded into the smoking-room for 
the last time and devoured the news. Some broke down 
and cried. Others clenched their fists and swore over 
the vivid and painful pen pictures by eye witnesses and 
survivors. For a while we all forgot we were nearly 
home. We came finally tO' quarantine. And I was 
amused to see how in these last hours the rather vigorous 
ardors of ship- friendship that had been engendered by 
the days spent together began to cool — how all those 
on board began to think of themselves no longer as mem- 
bers of a coordinated ship company bound together for 
weal or woe on the bosom of the great deep, but rather 
as individuals of widely separated communities and in- 
terests to which they were now returning and which of 
necessity would sever their relationship perpetually. I 
saw, for instance, the American judge who had unbent 



524 A TRAVELER AT FORTY 

sufficiently after we had been three days out to play cards 
with so humble a person as the commission merchant, and 
others, begin to congeal again into his native judicial 
dignity. Several of the young women who had been 
generally friendly now became quite remote — other 
worlds were calling them. 

And all of this goodly company were so concerned 
now as to whether they could make a very conservative 
estimate of the things they were bringing into America 
and yet not be disturbed by the customs inspectors, that 
they were a little amusing. What is honesty, anyhow? 
Foreign purchases to the value of one hundred dollars 
were allowed ; yet I venture to say that of all this charm- 
ing company, most of whom prided themselves on some 
form of virtue, few made a strictly honest declaration. 
They were all as honest as they had to be — as dis- 
honest as they dared be — no more. Poor pretending 
humanity! We all lie so. We all believe such untrue 
things about ourselves and about others. Life is literally 
compact of make-believe, illusion, temperamental bias, 
false witness, affinity. The so-called standards of right, 
truth, justice, law, are no more than the wire netting 
of a sieve through which the water oi life rushes almost 
uninterrupted. It seems to be regulated, but is it ? Look 
close. See for yourself. Christ said, " Eyes and they 
see not; ears and they hear not." Is this not literally 
true ? Begin with number one. How about you and the 
so-called universal standards? 

It had been so cold and raw down the bay that I 
could scarcely believe, as we neared Manhattan Island 
that it was going to be so warm and springlike on land 
as it proved. When we first sighted Long Island and 
later Long Beach it was over a thrashing sea ; the heads 
of the waves were being cut off by the wind and sent 
flying into white spindrift or parti-colored rainbows. 



THE VOYAGE HOME 525 

Even above Sandy Hook the wind made rainbows out 
of wave-tops and the bay had a tumbled surface. It 
was good to see again the stately towers of the lower city 
as we drew near — that mountain of steel and stone cut 
with its narrow canyons. They were just finishing the 
upper framework of the Woolworth Building — that first 
cathedral of the American rehgion of business — and 
now it reared its stately head high above everything else. 

There was a great company at the dockside to receive 
us. Owing to the sinking of the Titanic relatives were 
especially anxious and all incoming ships were greeted 
with enlarged companies of grateful friends. There 
were reporters on hand to ask questions as to the voyage 
— had we encountered any bodies, had we struck any 
ice? 

When I finally stepped on the dock, gathered up my 
baggage, called a few final farewells and took a taxi to 
upper Broadway, I really felt that I was once more at 
home. New York was so suggestively rich to me, this 
spring evening. It was so refreshing to look out and 
see the commonplace life of Eighth Avenue, up which 
I sped, and the long cross streets and later upper Broad- 
way with its rush of cars, taxis, pedestrians. On Eighth 
Avenue negroes were idling at curbs and corners, the 
Eighth Avenue type of shopkeeper lolling in his door- 
way, boys and girls, men and women of a none-too- 
comforting type, making the best of a humdrum and 
shabby existence. In one's own land, born and raised 
among the conditions you are observing, responsive to 
the subtlest modifications of speech, gesture, expression, 
life takes on a fresh and intimate aspect which only your 
own land can give after a trip abroad. I never quite 
realized until later this same evening, strolling out along 
Broadway to pay a call, how much one really loses abroad 
for want of blood affinity and years and years of resi- 



4^ 



526 



4 1S13 



A TRAVELER AT FORTY 



dence. All the finer details, such as through the magni- 
fying glass of familiarity one gains at home, one loses 
abroad. Only the main outlines — the very roughest 
details — stand revealed as in a distant view of moun- 
tains. That is why generalizations, on so short an 
acquaintance as a traveler must have, are so dangerous. 
Here, each sight and sound was significant. 

"And he says to me," said one little girl, strollmg 
with her picturesque companion on upper Broadway, *' if 
you don't do that, I 'm through." 

"And what did you say?" 

" Good night! ! ! " 

I was sure, then, that I was really home! 




THE END 



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